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by viyeolent (Doxophobia)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cussing, Drama, Implied Broken!HunHan, Implied Sexual Content, Jealous Chanyeol, M/M, Romance, Same-Sex Marriage, slight infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5118860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doxophobia/pseuds/viyeolent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chanyeol doesn't want to think it's too late to save his marriage, but when he spends their fifth anniversary crying for a husband who isn't going to come home, he fears that Baekhyun has finally stopped waiting for him to become the husband he promised he would be.</p><p>based on this livejournal <a href="http://viyeolent.livejournal.com/1380.html">drabble</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/promptcentral/status/616221318216728576">prompt</a>: Chanyeol was in it for money, but Baekhyun was in it with his heart.</p><p>cross-posted at <a href="http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/1049522/back-angst-romance-exo-baekyeol-chanbaek-kaibaek">AFF</a></p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

> Hi. Highly recommended that you read the drabble first (just to get a better(?) feel) >.o

 

* * *

   
B A C K  
 

* * *

 

 

 

When Baekhyun was eight, there were times that he thought he was ‘broken’.

 

He had nothing much to say about love and family. He couldn’t share any stories because he only had an older brother and a mother. He was sure he had a father, he was taught in class that having been born meant that he had one, but it had always been just the three of them.

 

Sometimes, it was Baekbeom who fetched him from school. Sometimes, it was his mother, and she would hold his hand while they walked. Most of the time, he didn’t mind it. The rest of the times, however, he didn't like it. Whenever he observed his classmates, they always had two ‘someone’s to hold each of their hands while he only had just Baekbeom or mother to hold one of his own. It made him feel like there was something wrong with him. He wanted to hold two people’s hands on his way home, too. He thought, back then, maybe there _was_ something wrong with him…?

 

But no, he wasn't broken. There wasn't anything wrong with him either. He was just envious of the other kids. Most of his classmates had both a mother and a father and a lunchbox filled with food… He was happy with his brother and mother, he liked mother’s ramyun, but he still wondered, how come he didn’t have what his classmates did? Was he not allowed…?

 

Baekhyun stopped asking about father when he turned ten.

 

He didn’t want to hear his mother cry at night anymore. It happened often. Sometimes, he cried too because there were days that he didn’t even see his mother at all. Those were the days he thought that, maybe, if he had a father then his mother would not have needed to work so hard every day. Maybe if he was a better boy, he would have a father to complain about, too. Watching his mother made him want to grow up faster so he could work and make money enough for the three of them. That way, his mother wouldn’t have to give them her share of food or quietly weep at night about not being able to give enough to them.

 

One day, a man came to their small house; a man who was as tall as he was handsome in his black suit. The stranger looked like he had stepped out of the movie poster one of Baekhyun's classmates showed him. The man looked just like what Baekhyun imagined his father would’ve been like; what he wanted his father to be like.

 

Every time, the man came to their house looking like that, and Baekhyun would peek at the stranger from his bedroom door. He stopped wondering whether the man was going to be his dad when he caught his mother crying, the night of the second visit. Maybe it was too late to wish for a father, after all…

 

After the third visit came around, he was told that he would be studying in a good school, a much better school; in an academy that was sure to get him into the country’s top universities after graduating. He had not asked how that could be even though he wondered how they could suddenly afford an academy because he had not seen his mother so happy before. That week, she cooked his and Baekbeom’s favorite dishes, stayed at home to help him with his homework during the day, and snuggled close to him at night. He thought she was happy, so he let himself be happy, too. They hadn’t been happy for a long time.

 

Baekhyun had only been twelve when he had been told that he was going to have everything he could ever want; everything his mother could ever wish for him… at the expense of leaving his family behind. All this he hadn’t known until the seventh and last visit came around, when the tall man had explained to him that he had been ‘chosen’ and, thus, was going to be under the care of the Parks from then on.

 

“Why can’t you come with me?” He remembered asking his mother with puffy eyes, all the while trying to wriggle out of the tall man’s grasp to go back to his mother’s arms. “Why is it just me?”

 

“I love you, Baekhyun. I want what’s best for you. I love you so much, I truly do. Please do not doubt that,” His mother had answered and cried the moment the tall man picked him up because he hadn’t wanted to go with him.

 

All little Baekhyun could feel at the time was the most devastating betrayal of his life. All he thought about was, if his mother truly loved him, then why was she letting the man in the black suit take him away? Didn’t she know he was going to be all alone? Wasn’t she going to miss him?

 

It didn’t make sense to him. If his mother loved him, as much as she said she did, then she would not have given him away to the man in black. She would not have packed his clothes beforehand. She would have asked him if he wanted to leave her and Baekbeom. She would have asked, and she would have known his answer would be ‘no’. It would've been ‘no’ every time she asked. She and Baekbeom were all that he had. He didn’t care about not having a father anymore.

 

Baekhyun remembers having cried; of having accused his mother of not loving him as much as she claimed to. He didn’t understand how love could ever be leaving someone’s life for the sake of their happiness. How could anyone hurt someone that much and call it ‘love’?

 

For years he drowned himself in books—in words, in thoughts—desperately trying to make sense of the pain left in his chest, because it truly hadn’t made sense to him. Or perhaps it had, for just a little, when he turned sixteen and met Master Park for the first time while the younger Park Chanyeol made his heart flutter for the hundredth time, four years after his mother told him goodbye. It definitely made sense when he vowed forever and everything he was to the man he knew he loved, despite knowing that his dream come true was nothing more than another business deal for the heir of Park Corporation. It made the most sense whenever he found himself crying on their bed, trying to convince himself that Chanyeol was just working overtime and not fucking someone else because Baekhyun was far from the husband he deserved; because they were part of two different worlds and no lie, no promise, no bridge of any form could ever change the fact.

 

Only when he has filled his suitcase, almost ten years since the last time he has seen Chanyeol’s smile, did he truly understand what his mother had to do. Love is wanting happiness for the person you love. It’s wanting what’s best for them, even if ‘best’ means giving up your part in their life so there would be space in it for happiness.

 

Chanyeol had been in it for the money, but Baekhyun had been in it with his heart; all of his heart, no matter how many pieces there are of it now. And so, if he has to leave just so happiness can find his husband, the boy he grew up and fell in love with, then he is more than willing to disappear.

 

Baekhyun takes with him a suitcase of clothes, memories, and the remaining pieces of his broken dream before the door shuts close.

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

“Baekhyun…?”

 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise for him when he opens the doors to their room and finds an empty bed. He already knows. There could’ve been no other reason for the hours he spent sitting at a table set for two and continued to wait until the restaurant had to close, long after the chauffeur returned to him with an empty limousine and an untouched white tailored suit.

 

“—hyun! Baekhyun!” Park Chanyeol shouts, voice reverberating like thunder through the golden halls as he paces from one floor to the next.

 

He knows how he has treated his husband for the last four years but it doesn’t stop him from rummaging through the rest of the mansion’s rooms with the aching hope that he would find his husband in one of them.

 

But Baekhyun isn’t. His husband isn’t home; nowhere to be found. There had been no  _‘Welcome home!_ ’ when he arrived. No  _‘Have you eaten?_ ’ when he enters the lavish kitchen. No  _‘Let me draw you a bath’_  when he recklessly throws his coat down on their bedroom’s floor.

 

Baekhyun can’t be gone. He can’t be, but no matter how hard Chanyeol tries to convince himself, he can’t deny the missing clothes or suitcase, and definitely not the  _‘I love you’_  that would have told him the long day has finally ended.

 

The day isn’t supposed to end like this. He doesn’t _want_  the night to end like this.

 

Chanyeol had been told he didn’t have a romantic bone in his body, but that had been before Baekhyun. He hadn’t been in love until now. That’s why he made sure to have his secretary re-schedule all his appointments to next week. That’s why he booked Baekhyun’s favorite restaurant for an entire night.

 

Tonight, he isn’t  _just_  Park Chanyeol, he’s Baekhyun’s husband. Tonight, he's supposed to tell the man he married how much he loves him. Tonight, he's supposed to ask for Baekhyun’s  _‘Yes’_ , not as the heir of one of the country’s biggest conglomerates, but as Chanyeol who has simply fallen in love with the best friend he had while he had been a spoiled boy. Tonight, their marriage was supposed to change for the better, because Chanyeol has finally decided to become a better husband.

 

But... the missing suitcase and the unopened box of white suit mean that Baekhyun has decided, too.

 

For the first time in five years, Chanyeol is the one that spends the night of their anniversary, crying over a husband who isn’t going to come home.

 

 

 

❀

 

 

It takes Baekhyun less than a day to settle in a cheap motel with all the intentions of milking what his little cash is worth until he finds a job. He refuses to use the card his husband gave him on their first anniversary. He threw his phone away and replaced it with a less impressive model for the same reason that he doesn’t want to have anything that Chanyeol can use to find him.

 

He cries after a week when the newspapers are still clean of the Park name and he’s convinced that, perhaps, Chanyeol hasn’t even realized he’s gone. It hurts him more than it relieves him to think that Chanyeol doesn’t love him enough to come looking for him, and he forces himself to swallow the painful lump in his throat whenever his mind would wander off to his husband. Chanyeol shouted at him once before, only once, and never raised a hand. He had been fortunate because, even though Chanyeol hadn’t loved him as much as their vows made them swear to, Chanyeol hadn’t been that cruel to him.

 

Baekhyun doesn’t regret leaving. Instead, he regrets having taken so long to stop being a nuisance to Chanyeol. He had known all along that Chanyeol didn’t see him as a husband. Maybe, sometime ago, he had been a dear friend; maybe he was just a break and a breath of fresh air gone stale. For some time, they shared kisses and his body only knew to be loved by Chanyeol’s. Those days certainly feel like a dream now. Just a little more and he would follow Chanyeol to forgetting all about them, too.

 

He’s pathetic, isn’t he…? Pathetic and all that he had been told he is by all those people who were also originally part of Park Chanyeol’s world. He has finally found the courage to run away, to escape that place that he hadn’t belonged to in the first place, yet his heart still beats faster when he hears the name Park. Here he is, thinking of wanting to be beside Chanyeol.

 

He shouldn't regret leaving, but he does.

 

He really, really does.

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

“What do you mean you’re not in the mood?”

 

He’s scowling again. It’s all he ever seems to do lately.

 

Ever since his best friend got engaged to some Chinese business tycoon’s daughter, his party-going days have seemed to truly meet their end. It doesn’t help that all his other friends have been roped into matrimony even before that. He doesn’t have many friends to start with, not many that he actually minds being with without a drink in his hand, and the ones he can actually trust are either leaving for China next week or trying to make an arranged marriage work.

 

 _“It means what it means. I’m not in the mood,”_  Sehun mutters through the speakers.

 

He can just imagine his best friend scowling like he is. Probably smoking out on their balcony, even. Sehun has dropped the habit long ago, but with how fragile the state of their company is in right now, it wouldn’t surprise him if the Ohs’ only son slips back into it.

 

Unwilling to let it blow up into another pathetic argument—over the phone, no less—Kai bites back the urge to snap at his best friend and settles for a short sigh. He doesn’t mean to guilt-trip, but he can’t help but be upset. It definitely shows when he replies, “Yeah. Okay, I get it.”

 

It just makes him feel worse when Sehun’s voice cracks through the static again, genuinely apologetic this time,  _“Just… let me settle things with Luhan first, alright?”_

 

“Yeah,” Kai crushes a stray cigarette butt under the heel of his shoe, wishing he can do the same to Senior Oh before nodding his head. “Of course. I understand.”

 

He does. Of course he understands the situation Sehun is in. Being wedded off to secure a business deal or conquer a market, it has happened to a handful of other people in his life. Different times, playing the same old song.

 

He had known it was going to happen to Kris. It even happened to Chanyeol, although the stupid guy has always been so willing to please his cold father anyway. But Sehun? Oh Sehun? Nouveau riche Ohs? Nothing but a mistake on his part, truly, because while they may have all been chaebols, the others aren’t illegitimate sons like he is. His own father would have laughed at the mere suggestion of using him, a bastard with no legal claim to the billions that his womanizing father’s group of companies make in a single year, the way Senior Oh has used his best friend.

 

 _“I expect you at my wedding,”_  Sehun voice cuts through his phone’s speaker again, sounding as serious as always and making Kai laugh.

 

They both know he can’t be there. Sehun’s parents have never been fond of him. Besides, his father would rather lock him up in a penthouse where he can’t run his mouth off than let him try to live a normal life. Really, why did his father even bother making a child like him if he would only spend his life making him live as if he didn’t exist?

 

Pretending to have not heard his excuses, his best friend simply repeats himself before hanging up.

 

“Freaking brat,” Kai half chuckles and sighs as he shoves the phone back into his pocket.

 

He tries not to think of how lonely his life is going to be from then on, now that Sehun is going to be occupied by his new princess. Not to mention, Sehun would be miles and miles away, and distance rarely ever made anything fun. Sneaking out and smuggling himself into China is too much of a hassle to even be an option. That leaves Chanyeol, whom he hasn’t seen since having told them he wants to be a better husband.

 

 _‘About damn time,’_ Kai thinks as he returns to Xiumin’s bar through the back door.  _‘Five years is too long to suffer a loveless marriage.’_

He has never voiced out his worry over the spouse Chanyeol refused to even name. It wasn’t his place to intervene in any way because, although Chanyeol was short-tempered and had a sharp tongue, Chanyeol was never the kind of man to touch anyone else first. He didn’t have to worry about Chanyeol being violent, but he was certain that Chanyeol was negligent. Often, Chanyeol’s spouse had been the source of the man’s frustration and the occasional butt of their jokes.

 

Even without knowing a name, Kai could tell that, whoever the unfortunate spouse was, they really cared for Chanyeol. It made him envious. Oh, what he wouldn’t do to have someone who loved and was devoted to him that much. Sometimes, on his lonelier nights, he would even joke about making it his personal mission to snatch spouses like that from cold-hearted husbands like Park Chanyeol.

 

The only thing that overpowered the bitterness that Chanyeol’s ungratefulness left on his tongue, to be honest, had been the awful taste of alcohol. Drinking and sex were his best distractions. Perhaps, if he had never chosen to get himself stupidly drunk every time he had to see the scowl on Chanyeol’s face, they would have had their first fight a long, long time ago. Maybe the first of a hundred, because he is _many_ things—a bastard, a flirt, a liar—but he isn’t a man who treats marriage as nothing more than a business deal. At least, not when he's sober. But when is he ever sober, really? Especially with friends like Oh Sehun and Park Chanyeol?

 

“It’s just you again tonight, huh?” Xiumin says as soon as Kai is back in his seat, past beyond the point of caring whether his acquaintance’s youngest brother comes into his bar through the front door like a normal person.

 

“Yeah. Probably going to be just me for a while.”

 

“Haven’t you thought of settling down, yourself?” the bar owner asks him. No malice, just genuine curiosity.

 

“Why? Are you getting sick of me, hyung?” Kai teases, lazily resting his chin on his palm.

 

“Can I say yes?” Xiumin teases back, distracting him with another drink.

 

“Getting me drunk isn't going to keep me away from your new employee for long,” He clarifies while he throws a glance at the direction of the staff room, where Baekhyun is busy washing glasses.

 

‘Baekhyunnie’ is attractive, he will admit to that. Cute face, cute smile. A bit too skittish when he—anyone—gets too close. It makes Baekhyun all the more fun to tease.

 

It doesn't go unnoticed by the bar owner, of course, who only shakes his head. Xiumin has never hired an extra hand before; has never found a need for one. For all the years he has known Xiumin, Kai has known him as a rather strict hyung who never settles for anything less than what he wants, both in his business or personal life. He's protective, too, very much so. Kai has witnessed the pros and cons of the man’s protection once or twice before, before Baekhyun arrived.

 

Xiumin looks out for the new puppy, and one has to wonder why that is. It doesn’t seem like Baekhyun can ever be Xiumin’s type. If Xiumin even has a type.

 

“It doesn't hurt to try to shut you out, does it?”

 

“True, but when has that ever worked out for you?” Kai chuckles before taking a sip of his scotch. The burn of alcohol as it makes its way down his throat is nice. It's much better than having to put up with the recurring feeling of being out of place, being left behind, and of having nowhere to really call home.

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

Baekhyun has thought of going back.

 

Once. Twice. A hundred times. As many times as he has saved Chanyeol's number, only to delete it again.

 

The harder he tries to forget, the more he remembers. The more he remembers, the more reasons he finds to call himself stupid; for waiting this long; for still waiting for a man who probably sleeps soundly now that he's gone.

 

He has many good reasons for leaving. All of them falls short against one. Just one.

 

Baekhyun looks at the digits on his phone's screen. Keyed in but never saved. Never will be.

 

He wonders if Chanyeol is asleep now. He wonders if Chanyeol can call their house a home again now that he's not in it anymore. He wonders if his absence has even made a difference.

 

“Why don't you just do it?” He's startled when Xiumin is suddenly at his side, seemingly having been there for a while now. “Just call them?”

 

“Oh. No, i-it's late, they're probably asleep now.”

 

Xiumin glances at the clock before raising a brow. It reads 7pm. Baekhyun wants to slap himself for lying. He almost does. His boss lets the lie slide and merely pats him on the shoulder before welcoming the most recent patron that has passed through the door.

 

The boss' friend stays at the counter the entire night again. The man doesn't resemble Chanyeol in any way, except for the way he holds his glass and the same scotch Baekhyun knows his husband likes. The man looks like a trouble maker. He’s also handsome. Just like Chanyeol, he looks like someone Baekhyun shouldn’t reach for.

 

Working in a bar makes Baekhyun wonder about how many people have also looked at Chanyeol the way he's looking at this stranger. How many people have had the blessing of Chanyeol's presence? How many has Chanyeol also looked at? Did those looks turn into something more? And if so, how many times…?

 

Baekhyun wishes Chanyeol could have just said it; that he doesn't… that he never loved him. At least, that way, he would have known. Being told he was unwanted from the very beginning would have been better than knowing his husband preferred to get hung over than to come home to him. Anything else would have been better.

 

Baekhyun doesn't look at the stranger's way again until closing time. He doesn't want to think of how beautiful strangers could have easily come forward to his husband the way Xiumin's friend has made his interest in him known. He doesn't want to think of the perfume on Chanyeol's clothes. He refuses to be the cologne on someone else’s.

 

He loves Chanyeol. Truthfully, he still does. He even… hates himself for it. Chanyeol wasn't the best husband but Chanyeol is his husband, the only one. Chanyeol is the only person that he has wanted for so long.

 

Baekhyun has imagined how going back could be like.

 

Once. Twice. A hundred times. As many times as he has dialled Chanyeol's number, only to end the call before it can even ring.

 

He doesn't know that if he dials for the hundred and first time, Chanyeol would have picked up.

 

(But Chanyeol never picked up, because Baekhyun never dialed again.)

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

Lady Luck is a fairly small bar, unknown to most people and hidden from plain sight. In this sense, the bar is quite exclusive. The only way to get there is to be brought there by a patron who already knows the way or to be incredibly lucky while being lost, just like what Xiumin said happened to Baekhyun.

 

Xiumin is a sensible man. Although he doesn't seem to be fond of nonsense, Kai is fairly convinced that Xiumin is a guy who can appreciate fun because the man is long-time friends with the older step-brother who still, somehow, manages to land himself into trouble. He likes Jongdae hyung better than he likes Junmyeon hyung for the sole reason that Jongdae actually bothers to check up on him every once in a while and never brings up their father's name.

 

His step-brother has probably asked Xiumin to look out for him. Maybe that's why Xiumin lets him treat the bar as his home, even setting up a small room at the back for when the penthouse gets too big and lonely. Or, maybe, it's just that Xiumin really has a soft spot for people who feel like they don't belong anywhere. After all, the brunet in Lady Luck's black bow tie makes for the second stray that the bar owner has picked up after him.

 

“I’m not going to lie, I think you’re cute,” Kai says, smiling with a tilt of his head when Baekhyun walks into his room after having seemingly been lost again.

 

Xiumin hadn't told him anything about Baekhyun. Well, aside from a name.  _Just_  a name. Xiumin didn't have to, though, because it only took a few hours for him to decide that he would rather hear the words from Baekhyun himself and has since gotten hooked. For anyone’s peace of mind, but mostly Baekhyun’s, he has toned down his advances since having recognized the discomfort they bring to the shorter man.

 

Kai will admit, there's an undeniable sweep of satisfaction about discovering new things about Baekhyun, such as the man's mellow singing voice or the way the small mouth makes a rectangle when Baekhyun laughs whole-heartedly. He wants to know this person with the beautiful kohl-lined eyes and precious smile. It's almost like an obsession, the way he keeps on wanting more and more and the way his day doesn't seem complete without trying to talk to Baekhyun.

 

But, just like any other day, “Thank you” is the only response that he gets before Baekhyun is sputtering apologies and skittering out, always in a hurry to not share the same space with him.

 

“Ugh, not again!” The young chaebol groans when he slumps back onto his bed.

 

Him and his stupid mouth. When will he ever say normal things? When will they ever be able to talk like normal people?

 

Maybe it's not an obsession because there's no compulsion that drives him to disregard the unspoken boundaries that Baekhyun wants to keep. It probably isn't a crush either. He knows what a crush is. He remembers it to be an overwhelming and an often fuzzy kind of feeling in the chest and a commonly uncomfortable yet also curiously pleasant kind of churning in his gut. Whatever it is, it definitely isn't either of those.

 

Maybe he genuinely just... likes Baekhyun? The fact that this even bothers him must mean he really  _does_  like Baekhyun, right? And if not, then he's pretty sure he's starting to. Otherwise, he wouldn't worry about saying the right thing or be sorely disappointed that he's being thrown off his game.

 

If nothing has changed, then he would have just continued to pretend that he has never noticed the ring wrapped around one of Baekhyun's pretty fingers.

 

The fact that Kai wants the ring gone must mean  _something_.

 

Right?

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

“The bar is closed on Mondays,” the man says, head tilting slightly to a side, reminiscent of all the previous times that this person has teased him.

 

Baekhyun wouldn't _exactly_ call the man a complete stranger because they've...  _talked_ , in the loosest sense of the word, a few times before. The man knows his name courtesy of Xiumin. He can’t return the favour and call this person an acquaintance when he doesn't really have a name to pin the face with. He has always just called this person 'Xiumin's friend', he didn't think he would need it if he was going to spend his time avoiding the man anyway.

 

“It's a holiday tomorrow, too. Didn't you know that?”

 

 _‘I know now,’_ Baekhyun wants to say, but it probably isn't wise to answer back to his employer's friend that way.

 

The owner of Lady Luck has already been so kind to him by having hired him despite the lack of a proper resume, something that he couldn’t help but only see as proof that he’s been nothing but the Parks’ carefully groomed property all these years. True enough, just as Master Park had promised his mother, he accomplished his studies and graduated from a good university. He studied hard and worked even harder under Master Park himself, who eventually found the opportunity to use him ripe enough with a public announcement of his and Chanyeol’s engagement.

 

And, because he was only meant to boost his husband’s image, Baekhyun has nothing to his name. He has no assets, no shares—all of them are still truly Chanyeol’s—and there’s little else to be proud of that wouldn’t be attributed to the Parks in any way. He's badly in need of money right now, money he doesn't have to keep staying even in that pitiful motel. At this point, he's almost willing to do anything to not be homeless, including begging Xiumin to let him stay in the storage room even just for a while. Even a blanket and a roof over his head would be fine, really.

 

“You didn’t know, did you?” The man, whose deceivingly casual clothes and blond hair with pepper roots, never fails to appear intimidating to Baekhyun, especially when the former’s gaze makes a sweep. The stranger glosses over the red suitcase leaning against his side and then says, “You have nowhere to go.”

 

A factual statement. Not a question.

 

“No,” Baekhyun confirms with a shake of his head.

 

He would have very much preferred his boss to be the first person to see him today rather than this man who gives off the aura of trouble. He isn't in the mood to be pitied first thing in the morning. He doesn't need someone else to make him feel bad about his situation, and definitely not someone who can afford to drink the same liquor as his husband does.

 

Instead of grimacing and being repulsed by him for being poor, just like what Baekhyun expects and is used to, the man approaches him and takes a hold of his suitcase. He is quick to rise to his feet, of course, and he grasps the man's wrist to keep this stranger from walking away with what little he has left since having ran away from Chanyeol.

 

“Please don't do this,” he pleads. “I don't have money, but please—”

 

“I don't need money.”

 

“But—” cold anxiety washes over Baekhyun with those words, sending a shiver down his spine and turning his fingers into ice. What else does he have but his body? The runaway Park squirms underneath the hold and digs his feet where he stands. “I-I'm not that kind of person.”

 

“What are you talking about?” The stranger asks, letting Baekhyun retrieve the suitcase to clutch it close to his own body. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

 

“Then what are you talking about? Why are you trying to take my things?”

 

“I'm carrying it to the car. You're going to live with me.”

 

“I don't even  _know_  you.”

 

“I'm Kai,” ‘Kai’ retorts, clearly missing the point, before trying to grab the handle of the suitcase again.

 

“What makes you think I'd live with you?” Baekhyun asks.

 

His attempt to put distance between them ending in miserable failure. He still ends up having the suitcase taken away from him by Kai's stronger hand while the other wraps firmly around his own wrist.

 

“Because I'm not letting you stay here where men who can't take 'no' for an answer can just snatch you right off the streets,” Kai explains, careful not to make the mistake of holding onto Baekhyun too tightly and on the suitcase too loosely while he leads them to his car.

 

It's a white Porsche, a far cry from the sleek, black Maserati that Chanyeol owns, but it still screams rich to Baekhyun and makes him all the more nervous. “Isn't that what you're doing? Not taking no for an answer? Snatching me off the streets?”

 

“Look, I know I haven't made the best impression on you. I wasn't lying when I called you cute before because you _are_. God knows I'm not the only one who thinks that way,” the chaebol supplies, almost groaning because he’s unable to bear the devastated expression marring the other's face.

 

“I'm sorry, but I'm not leaving you out here alone, and especially not when I know now that you have nowhere else to go,” Kai continues. “We don't even have to see each other when we get back to my house. I'll make sure you'd be settled for the night. That's it. Or have a maid do it if I make you that uncomfortable. Rest assured you'll be taken care of. I'll even bring you back here in time for work, luggage and everything. If I try anything, or god forbids, I hurt you in any way, you can press charges. I'm not going to retaliate. I promise you.”

 

Once they're both settled inside his car, Kai grabs a paper from the dashboard. He flips it and begins to scribble down the words onto the empty side before he hands it to the man on his passenger seat.

 

“Here,” he says with a smile and lets the sheet be taken from him by slender fingers. “Just in case your spouse is a lawyer.”

 

Baekhyun simply purses his lips again when he discovers that a signature has already been affixed at the bottom, turning the piece of paper into a binding contract. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the other man smiling and turning away from him just as he’s about to speak. He opts to just close his mouth again. What’s there for him to say…?

 

Kai barely holds back a sigh when the silence comes back. He feels just a tad guilty about being grateful over Baekhyun not wanting to talk; whether it’s about the unnamed significant other, the circumstances that led to where they are now, or something else entirely that can pass as the most insignificant of small talks. He won't bring it up if the smaller man doesn't want to because he himself isn't ready to talk about Baekhyun's spouse.

 

Beside him, he notices that Baekhyun is biting down on his lip while staring at the sheet of paper in his smaller hands. The engine roars into life then, and it drowns out the tiniest sob that comes with eyes welling up with tears.

 

How filthy of him, Baekhyun thinks, that he feels relief over having a place to stay in now. For now. They were right, those people who told him he was undeserving of Chanyeol, they had all been right. Chanyeol doesn't need a husband who can't even support himself, much less one who would rather accept the hospitality of another man than come home.

 

“Thank you,” Baekhyun whispers—and he inhales sharply the moment his voice cracks.

 

Now, Kai is many things—a bastard, a flirt, a liar—but not an idiot, although he  _must_  be, because it takes an idiot to fall in love with a married man. It takes an even greater idiot to pull over and kiss the tears that are threatening to spill from that married man's eyes.

 

He is an idiot. He really must be.

 

Throughout the entire hour of the drive back to his house, it takes every bit of Kai to not let himself be a greater idiot.

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

The motel is cheap.

 

Rugged.

 

 _Dirty_ , Chanyeol grunts.

 

The woman sitting in the lobby bats her lashes at him and leans forward, just a little. To him, she’s a cat that has found a mouse; purring, watching, observing. She must think he has come here looking for a good time, especially when his gaze remains fixed on the direction where a middle-aged salary man disappeared to with a much younger woman. He steels himself to stay impassive when he questions the receptionist some more, but the scowl on his face becomes more and more difficult to hide the longer he stays and the more disgusted he becomes with this woman's company and the underlying message of her practiced spiel.

 

“He should be this… tall,” he raises his hand up to his chin as an estimate for his missing husband’s height. He realizes how truly negligent he has been of Baekhyun when he continues making vague gestures reminiscent of his other half. He doesn’t even know how tall Baekhyun really is; he only remembers the forehead kisses. He used to give those often to Baekhyun when they had been much younger; more innocent.

 

Chanyeol growls a torturous minute later. With each passing moment, he only feels more and more frustrated. Each second he wastes here is a second he could be spending with Baekhyun; each second is a second that he isn’t spending beside Baekhyun.

 

Only after having wasted his time with her incessant rambling does the receptionist crack and tell him that the man he’s looking for already checked out.

 

“When?!”

 

She jumps when he slams a fist against the desk. “Y-Yesterday,” she answers warily.

 

Yesterday.

 

 _Only_ yesterday.

 

Chanyeol inhales with a curt nod and leaves without a word, letting his new secretary deal with the woman in his stead. He needs her silence.

 

He can't have his father knowing that he's been looking and he definitely can't have the news of his missing husband to leak to the media. Their corporation’s rivals can very well afford to fabricate a story and twist it even more… He's not going to give anyone a reason to use and hurt Baekhyun. He’ll deal with the politics, but he refuses to let anyone drag Baekhyun into it anymore.

 

It already makes him angry that Baekhyun would choose to sleep in a place like this. Why didn’t his husband just withdraw cash instead of not using the card he gave at all? Isn’t it difficult to live a life without sustenance? What was his husband thinking, settling for a neighbourhood like this?! If Baekhyun doesn’t want anything to do with him and refuses to take any of the amount he has given, then how has Baekhyun gotten by so far?

 

It makes him  _furious_  to even think of how many other pairs of eyes have tried undressed Baekhyun without him even knowing. Baekhyun wouldn’t resort to selling himself, would he? Baekhyun hasn’t gotten hurt while they’ve been apart, has he? Baekhyun—his Baekhyun—his Baekhyun is somewhere safe, right?

 

The moment Chanyeol drives back, he slams his back against the driver's seat and punches the stirring wheel in both helplessness and frustration. The horn of his car is the only thing that drowns out the strangled cry that escapes his throat. This, _all of this_ , wouldn’t have ever happened if he hadn’t been such a fool.

 

Just when he thought he would finally see him again, he missed Baekhyun again. The first few times, he had been only a couple of hours behind but now it's a day? An entire _day_? Yesterday. Baekhyun checked out  _only_ yesterday.

 

 _The number you have dialled is—_ Chanyeol cuts the call and tries again. He tries again and again while staring at the name of his husband on his phone's screen, right until it cracks and shatters in his palm. How…?  _How?!_  Where is Baekhyun right now!?

 

He throws the broken phone to the empty passenger seat where he remembers having listened to Baekhyun sing for the first time.

 

He wants to hear Baekhyun's voice sing his favourite song. He wants to hear that melody again, the one that Baekhyun thinks he doesn't hear when they're both home at the same time and sharing the same space. Oh what he wouldn't give to have his husband here; to be back to four years ago just so he could hold onto Baekhyun's hand as if it were the first time instead of pulling away from it like the touch of another man could burn.

 

“Where are you, Baekhyun…? Where in the world are you?”

 

If Baekhyun isn't in the motel, then where is he? Baekhyun hasn't been in contact with his family for more than ten years now, no thanks to his own. Without money or credit, any other lodging available to his husband will be less than ideal than the rundown motel. Will Baekhyun really choose to live in the streets? To run to a place far, far away rather than come home to him?

 

He already knows the answer to that. He always thinks he knows the answer to everything. Lo and behold, he had been wrong when he said he wouldn't ever love his husband; when he called it ‘probably friendship’ whenever he sneaked his father’s treasured scholar out of the mansion; when he used to search for just one person in the parties he had to attend, thinking it was only natural for the sake of the deal their parents made. He had always been wrong when the questions involved Baekhyun.

 

Park Chanyeol married for money, money he has always had, but what use does he have for it now—for all the money in the world, if his husband won't ever come back?

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

Baekhyun winces when the pan slips out of his grasp. It makes such a loud  _clanging_  noise, one that surely would have been heard in the entire floor. He quickly picks up the pan, which is as expensive as  _everything else_  in the penthouse, and immediately heads over to the sink to wash it again.

 

“Baekhyun? That you?” Kai's voice is groggy when the man wanders into the kitchen after having successfully navigated out of his bedroom with closed eyes. “What are you doing?”

 

“Breakfast,” the shorter man chirps, realizing he has nothing to really show, before he scratches the back of his head. “I... was going to make breakfast.”

 

He meant to make breakfast as a small token of gratitude for Kai, who has been true to his word since they set foot in here. Unfortunately, he woke up later than he intended to, and he was absolutely surprised to find an almost empty fridge and as an equally empty pantry. He couldn't very well cook vodka, not with... well,  _more_  vodka.

 

“Why?”

 

Baekhyun observes Kai while the latter stretches and rubs a sleepy eye. He can't believe this is the same man who has stepped in for him against rowdy bar patrons; this man whose eyes just blink when he sees the sad state his fridge is in.

 

“Oh,” Kai's lips curl into a shy smile, certainly embarrassed by the bottles of liquor instead of grocery inside the refrigerator, before walking over to the phone by the counter and asking, “I'll call downstairs for food. Do you want anything? Uhm, do you have any allergies?”

 

“Anything without cucumber is good,” Baekhyun replies.

 

He already feels guilty about continuing to take advantage of this man’s hospitality. He doesn't even realize that he has bowed his head again. He knew Kai was rich, he simply didn't expect Kai to be  _this_  rich. He appreciates Kai's kindness, he truly does, but he didn't run away from a chaebol only to seek comfort from yet another chaebol.

 

“I said I'll take care of you, remember? So let yourself depend on me, alright?” Kai says, reaching out a hand to ruffle Baekhyun's soft hair. He doesn't pull away, not until he remembers the ring on the latter's finger and he finds himself asking, “It's a wedding ring, isn't it? I've known for a while.”

 

He feels more stupid than brave for having asked. He spent the entirety of last night just tossing and turning in his bed. He kept thinking about the ring, he wanted it out of his head.

 

Kai hopes that getting it done, that asking about it, would finally put an end to this. He’s not used to this. Hell, he doesn’t know what this, this feeling in his chest, _is_. All this time, he thought that asking about the person wearing the other ring would kill the feelings growing inside him before they could take root.

 

But, Baekhyun nods and lifts his head to meet his eyes. “Yes,” the older man says, barely above a whisper.

 

Kai knows it's too late. His heart makes a small leap when, for the first time, Baekhyun doesn't skitter away from him. He’s already in too deep.

 

The ring means someone is waiting for Baekhyun in their own home; someone who has already promised to Baekhyun the things he's telling him now, all the things he's been thinking of and has been wanting to tell Baekhyun. The ring is there because there's someone whom Baekhyun loves and he hates it. He hates seeing the ring. He hates remembering it's there. He wants to ask about it, about the person who put it there, but at the same, he wants nothing more to yank it off of Baekhyun's hand and throw it very far away.

 

It doesn't make sense, does it? Being jealous of someone he has never met. He's here, though, wanting someone he has only known for a few months. He brought this person to his home, his _cage_ , when he has never even thought of showing it to his friends. That makes even less sense, doesn't it? How can he be this enamoured by a man he only officially introduced himself to yesterday?

 

And oh, Kai feels so much worse when Baekhyun smiles. It's not the brightest smile he has seen in his life, but it's the brightest smile he has ever seen on Baekhyun. The reason for it must be none other than the ring… the spouse.

 

He still remembers seeing Baekhyun for the first time and thinking how pretty Baekhyun was. Honestly, Baekhyun isn’t really his type—he liked those individuals with big eyes that made for intense stares—but, he had watched Baekhyun comfort a sobbing woman, once, and his curiosity grew alongside the smile that formed on Baekhyun’s lips for the sake of drawing out a smile from her. Needless to say, Baekhyun ended up having caught his smile and attention, too, and without even knowing.

 

“I... I have been waiting for you to tell me off. To tell me to just stop because you're married,” Kai mutters, remembering all those times he had been gently when not politely brushed off. “Why haven't you?”

 

They were barely a little more than strangers in Xiumin's bar in the same space yesterday. No, they still are, even if Baekhyun is in his home like this and even if Baekhyun isn’t trying to escape him, they’re still strangers.

 

How… He is in love with Baekhyun. He is in love with Baekhyun, and so is someone else. That ‘someone else’ is someone whom Baekhyun has also chosen. The person he wants to be to Baekhyun, someone is already it.

 

Baekhyun isn't his to touch. Baekhyun isn't his. This isn't where Baekhyun belongs. The ring on Baekhyun's finger is a reminder he can't ignore. It’s a warning for when he does.

 

“It's just a ring now,” Baekhyun's voice is soft when the man answers, but the smile is still there. The memories must be that fond… it makes Kai more jealous. Almost. “I can't stay married by myself, can I?”

 

Baekhyun still wears the ring because it's the only thing that can prove that he has ever been Chanyeol's. He wants to keep believing in the Chanyeol who played with him when he first arrived in the Park manor; the Chanyeol who stuck to his side during formal gatherings with a tiny scowl whenever someone else talked to him; the Chanyeol he met officially when he had been sixteen and had told him that it  _had_ to be the two of them who would wait for each other at the end of that aisle. He wants to believe that Chanyeol loved him, somehow, even if only for once upon a time.

 

It hurts to admit it. It hurts to say out loud that the ring never meant more than an agreement. It hurts to say that Chanyeol has really forgotten about him or that, perhaps, Chanyeol never meant to remember his own words. Even just the thought of Chanyeol hurts.

 

Chanyeol used to smile. He smiled a lot. He laughed as often and laughed even louder at his own jokes. Chanyeol had been happiness, once upon a time, before he took over his father's company and before Master Park spun a tale that started with their names sewn together. They aren't going to have a happily ever after, after all, because Baekhyun never ceased to be more than the foolish pauper who has fallen in love with the prince.

 

Kai's expression is solemn when Baekhyun looks up at him, with brows knit together and the corners of his lips dipping.

 

 _‘Oh. How rude of me,’_ Baekhyun thinks, to trouble someone else with his problems. He should've never said anything.

 

As if able to read his mind, the chaebol is quick to cut that line of thought.

 

“Don't apologize. Not for this. _Never_ for this,” Kai says. “I... You don't know me that well, but if you want to talk about it, I'll listen. If you don't want to, then… we don't have to.”

 

He can't let someone who smiles so fondly at their wedding ring to say sorry. For having been in love. For having said yes to someone who also loved them. He doesn't want to hear it. People shouldn't have to be sorry for love.

 

“Don't think of your worries while you're here," Kai continues. "I don't look like it, but I'm pretty strong, you know? You don't have to worry about a crazy spouse. I'm worth five bouncers. I'm not kidding,” He laughs when he pulls at Baekhyun's cheeks to form a smile, purging the tension in the atmosphere with a smile of his own because he doesn't want their day to start like this. He definitely won't let the day end like this either. ”I want you to enjoy your stay, alright? Think of it as my way of making up for all the times I've creeped you out.”

 

Baekhyun considers this.

 

It would be rude of him if he pretends that nothing happened, wouldn't it? Especially when Kai even let him sleep in a real bedroom when he would've been satisfied with the floor and a few blankets. Or just _a_ blanket. Kai doesn’t have to feed him and yet, Kai is ordering food for him and asking what he likes. After he has spent the night here, the younger man doesn't seem as intimidating as he had first seen him.

 

“You never creeped me out,” Baekhyun answers.

 

A half-lie.

 

“Says the guy who ran away every time I talked to him.”

 

A half-truth. He didn’t run away  _every_  time.

 

“You never said hello properly.”

 

“Huh… Okay, you have a point there.”

 

Baekhyun laughs. He can't remember the last time he has done so. He only remembers how he cooked Chanyeol's favourites for four years. He became friends with their house chef that way because Chanyeol was never home for their anniversary and a banquet was too big of a reminder for him who sat alone for four years.

 

“Let's start over,” Kai straightens his back, extending a hand out to him and a charming smile. “Hello, I'm Kai. It's very nice to meet you.”

 

Baekhyun chuckles and does the same. “Hi, I'm Baekhyun. Thank you for having me here.”

 

“Will you join this not-a-stranger for dinner later?”

 

Granted that they already tried having dinner last night. Served at the same time. While being in separate rooms. It made Kai nervous.

 

That’s another first time for him. Being nervous, that is. He has always liked the food from the hotel's kitchen, and he kept thinking about whether or not Baekhyun would like it, too. He wanted Baekhyun to enjoy his stay because maybe then, Baekhyun would find the food worth staying more than a couple of nights over.

 

Kai has never had anyone over before. No one stays for more than a few hours here, no one who isn't Jongdae anyway. Truth be told, it's the first time he himself has stepped in here in months because he likes his small room in Lady Luck much better for the people he can talk to, even if only about the most superficial things. A penthouse is too big of a house for him who's been lonely for years.

 

“Will you let me cook it? It's the least I can do for your help.”

 

Baekhyun's offer surprises Kai. For just a little bit. Or maybe a lot. He isn't used to having people ask to do things for him, and even less used to being asked how they could repay him for the things he willingly does for them. He’s not used to this and even less used to thoughts that are purely innocent in nature.

 

Dinner is awkward when it's had. Kai talks more than he chews, completely taken by the excitement of having someone sit across him. He doesn’t think he has talked this much to anyone about anything.

 

Baekhyun doesn't mind this unstoppable flow of thoughts and conversation. He’s used to listening to the elite and acquiescence, but this time, he really wants to listen because he’s enjoying himself. His silence is mistaken for boredom, but he clarifies it to be the good kind of speechless. He has never been told that the meal he cooked is good, and he has never thought the sight of an empty plate would move him so much that he tears up while washing the dishes by hand. His eyes have dried by the time Kai comes back with gelato.

 

Kai, too, feels as if he hasn't had as much fun before, even though all they do afterwards is eat and eat some more while watching the chick flicks Sehun replaced his Marvel movies with. The chick flicks are cheesy and unrealistic, they make for a couple rounds of laughter when they don’t make him cringe. Baekhyun seems to like them and, well, watching Baekhyun enjoy himself is worth a couple of hours of discomfort.

 

He remembers the ring on Baekhyun's finger halfway through the second movie. He can't imagine having a spouse who's too busy to even watch a movie with him. More than that, he can't imagine passing up the opportunity to have every night be like tonight. His friend Chanyeol is the big idiot that easily comes to mind, but Kai believes that Baekhyun's spouse is the biggest idiot there is.

 

If it were him, he would help his spouse cook just so they could be together in the kitchen. Every second counts when life is short, and life always is. If he were to marry, it would be to someone he would want to see every day and spend every minute of each day with. If that person were to choose him, as well, it would make him the happiest man. After all, that's the point of marriage, isn't it? To let the world know you've chosen to spend the rest of your days with this special person?

 

 _‘How sad it is,’_ Kai thinks. _‘For people who have once been so in love that they promised each other a future together, to have to realize they can't keep being a part of each other's life anymore.’_

 

It's strange how the ring on Baekhyun's finger never leaves his mind. It’s not his place. But is it? Is it strange? It would already make him happy if Baekhyun even looked at him as a man. It would make him so happy if Baekhyun even looked at him at all.

 

If Baekhyun's spouse is stupid enough to let Baekhyun go, is it still wrong for Kai to hope to have a part in Baekhyun's future?

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

“I thought I've made myself clear, father.”

 

Chanyeol is seething when he reaches his father's office and shoves the old man's secretary aside when she insists on standing in his way. Inexcusable behaviour, yes, but rationality is weak in the face of blind emotions, especially when he discovers that she, as well, had been lying when she told him his father was currently in a meeting, only for him to find no one else there. How fitting it is of her to be a liar, just like his father when the old man had said he wouldn't touch his marriage and Chanyeol had found a business partner's daughter in his room.

 

“Yes, yes, your exceptional treatment of Nana made it crystal,” His father replies, calm and collected, as if his own son hadn't just barged into his office and rattled the rest of the floor's residents to get there. “I'd like you to meet Dara next Thursday. I've made preparations for—”

 

“No! I am not meeting anyone!” Chanyeol yells in response. He’s sick of his father’s meddling. He’s _so_ sick and tired of this.

 

“Your civil status is a small detail, Chanyeol, and easily remedied.”

 

“I'm not letting you annul my marriage. I'm not going to be someone else's husband.”

 

His father sighs. It’s a long and dreadful sigh, exactly the same as he used to make while Chanyeol had been younger. A parent’s expression of disappointment is a strong weapon against a loving child. “A husband, you say? And where is this spouse you speak of right now? Baekhyun hasn't been home for three months. Three months is quite enough time for him to decide whether he wants to come back to you, don't you think?”

 

Chanyeol scowls. What are three months when pitted against Baekhyun's five years? What is his sleepless nights' worth compared to the nights he left his husband to sleep alone? To eat alone during anniversaries? To fend for himself when they had to put up a show during conferences, and gatherings, and dinners? He would have left much earlier, if he had been Baekhyun. If he were Baekhyun, he wouldn't have put up with him at all.

 

He had been so used to having Baekhyun there with him that he forgot that Baekhyun had choices. Every time he didn’t come home on time, each consecutive time since the first time he forgot to say ‘thank you’, and for every single time that he disregarded their vows because it was easier than thinking too much about how much of their relationship was due to love and was real—Baekhyun chose him, too. Baekhyun still chose to be with him.

 

Baekhyun hadn't taken his freedom away from him, it was he who had taken Baekhyun's instead, when he uttered his vow with only the thought of finally making his father proud.

 

“I choose Baekhyun,” Chanyeol replies, loud enough for the secretary by the doors to hear, loud enough to be heard from the floor's lobby. “Whether it's ten years ago or ten years after, whether he's here or not, I still choose Baekhyun.”

 

He had been so stupid, so _utterly_  stupid for having let himself believe everyone else than the words of the boy who had already been special to him before they officially met at sixteen. He hurt Baekhyun by doubting him; by thinking and believing Baekhyun only wanted his money when Baekhyun laughed at his boring jokes before Baekhyun even knew of his last name. Worse, he let others hurt Baekhyun. He trapped Baekhyun in a mansion that could have housed all the friends the man could have had if only he hadn't let Baekhyun's life revolve around him.

 

There’s so much to make up for, but how? How can he possibly earn Baekhyun’s forgiveness? How will he when Baekhyun ran away from him and is nowhere to be found?

 

“You will change your mind eventually, Chanyeol,” His father retorts, unfazed when Chanyeol's fist meets his desk in a loud slam. “You are never going to find him.”

 

“Don't you touch him.”

 

“My dearest son, you forget that I gave him to you in the first place. ’Husband'?” The older Park scoffs. “An acceptable alternative for 'property'.”

 

Property.

 

 _Property_.

 

Chanyeol would deny it; would say that Baekhyun hadn’t ever been that word to him, has always been so much more than that, but saying so would contradict how he had treated his husband.

 

He hadn't even thought to address Baekhyun as his 'husband' outside of work, not until he recognized the need to label the man who waited for him at home. 'Husband' had been for the blocked number on his now broken phone. 'Husband' had been for the person whose meals he never made time to eat. 'Husband' had been the reason he hadn't wanted to come home. He didn’t understand what that word meant.

 

Husband is what became of the teary-eyed boy in the stuffy suit that made him look like he was twelve. Husband is what Chanyeol said he would be to him because Chanyeol hadn't liked how the people in their fancy coats and dresses crooned at the boy who liked his ears. Husband is for the boy he worked hard to meet at the end of the aisle.

 

It had always,  _always_  been for Baekhyun.  _Just_  Baekhyun. But, because Chanyeol had been terribly selfish, he wrapped it in all that was wonderfully sweet and ruined the very word that he made Baekhyun fall in love with.

 

“It's unfortunate that he has resorted to this course of action, it truly is. The public must feel sympathetic once they learn that Baekhyun ran away from his loving Prince Charming,” there is amusement in the older Park's voice when he hooks a hand to a drawer and plucks out a brown envelope, but the small smile doesn't show itself until the envelope reaches the edge of the desk and the palms of Chanyeol's hands.

 

Inside the envelope are pictures of Baekhyun, ever since his husband left. He sees the red suitcase, the one they didn't know was from Baekhyun's mother until they found the letter inside a secret pocket. Chanyeol recognizes the places, some of them, especially those from the first pictures.

 

His hands slightly tremble with the urgent wish for the pictures to bring him to where Baekhyun is; to all those moments that he’s holding and live inside of them with Baekhyun. His husband appears even thinner; tired. It takes more will for him to keep his fingers uncurled while he’s holding the pictures as gently as he can manage because he couldn't do it for the real Baekhyun.

 

He could've stopped Baekhyun from leaving if he hadn't waited in the restaurant. He could've started asking for Baekhyun’s forgiveness instead. He could’ve sought atonement right then and there and Baekhyun wouldn't have ever had to stay in that horrid motel; wouldn't have had to worry about making ends meet every single day. He would have given Baekhyun everything, he would have sat with him for dinner and would have made time for him. No more excuses, no more missed calls.

 

The only picture where Baekhyun is close to smiling is the last, the one where his husband has the suitcase resting against his own thigh. It's the one that Chanyeol rips in half to separate the blurry image of his husband and another man. His father wants him to begin forgetting Baekhyun, It’s such an obvious bait, but it’s not going to happen. He’s not giving his father that kind of satisfaction.

 

“I will only believe Baekhyun.”

 

Because he’s done believing everyone else. He’s so done with playing along with them.

 

If only he had grown faster, had matured earlier, then Baekhyun wouldn't have needed to suffer a husband who didn't even know what he wanted to do. He wanted his father to stop sighing, to stop being disappointed in him; for his father to recognize him for him that he hadn't realized that he was taking everything and everyone else for granted. How many years has he wasted by having longed to hear his own father call him ‘son’ and mean it?

 

Chanyeol stands taller than his father now, no longer a boy wet behind the ears and eager for any crumb of acknowledgment. It has taken him so long to admit that the man in front of him will never be proud of him, that this weathered man only spared him a glance because of the name they happened to share. He’s just the means to an end; a way for a man’s legacy to live on when the man himself is no more.

 

Master Park has always,  _always_  been a business man. Never a father.

 

The sad thing isn't that Baekhyun ran away, but the fact that Baekhyun did because Chanyeol had been too busy wanting to be called a son to be the husband he promised to be.

 

“You need me for the company,” Chanyeol answers, voice having grown much deeper through the years. It might already be too late, but he would rather atone now than never at all. Even if Baekhyun isn’t here, he will change himself to be someone worthy of Baekhyun’s return. “If you insist on laying a hand on my marriage or ruining my husband, you best forget that you ever had a son.”

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

> **_[Beep.]_ **

 

Ya! Kai! You rascal! What do you mean you 'took Baekhyun home', huh? Explain yourself to me quickly, you punk...! Argh, but that's not what I called for.

 

Don't come to the bar today, do you understand? Baekhyun, too. If he really _is_ with you, then don’t bring him here. This is not a request. I can't believe I'm saying this... but it might be best that he stays with you for the time being. Don’t leave him alone. Wait, no, what I meant to say is that  _you_  leave him alone, just don’t let him out of your sight.

 

Geez, how do I even—? I'll just explain later. Call me as soon as you're awake.

 

> **_[Beep.]_ **

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

Baekhyun has learned a lot about his host over the last two days.

 

Last night, he discovered that Kai absolutely _loves_ dogs but is afraid to keep one because he's almost never home. They both agreed that the dog would only be lonely, they both also agreed that it’s too cruel to let any animal feel that kind of grief. If Kai ever changes his mind, Baekhyun would want to help take care of it.

 

He thinks that he and Kai could be good friends. Maybe, in another universe, they are and always have been. For some reason, it's just so easy to talk to Kai. He wouldn't mind listening to Kai’s stories for a few more days. Kai may be younger than he is, but Kai understands how lonely a beautiful house can be just the same.

 

Kai likes to part; likes being surrounded by people but is actually quite shy and doesn't want heaps of attention. Not all at once, at least. Baekhyun finds it a little difficult to believe because, to him, Kai is strong and charismatic. Kai, to him, is the type that seems to always be ready to take on the world. It takes someone brave (Kai believes 'stupid' is a better word, but keeps the thought to himself) to stand up for a stranger the way Kai did for him when he first started working at Lady Luck.

 

Kai's silver hair is actually for work and not (necessarily) because he's a troublemaker. Being a model suits him. Baekhyun thinks it's just right that that the world sees and admires this man.

 

Kai hadn't mentioned anything about his family. Maybe his isn't worth mentioning like Baekhyun's. Baekhyun wonders if they're anything like Chanyeol's; always in meetings or trips; always apart, even if they live in the same house. He wonders if it's common for chaebols' families to be lonely. Maybe Kai lives alone because it's the closest Kai gets to running away.

 

When he finds that Kai already awake, Baekhyun wonders if he’s not the only wishing they could spend more time together.

 

Truth be told, the last couple of nights make up one of the nicest experiences he has had in a while. He truly enjoyed just lazing around on a couch and watching improbable life situations on a big screen, so much that he couldn’t believe his own memories. He had spent many of his past nights trying to staying up all night while hoping that a phone will ring or staying inside the bathroom where no one can hear him cry. With Kai, it’s just… things are so different.

 

The thoughts end there. They have to, because when Wednesday morning comes, his wedding ring is still there and he's still just Byun Baekhyun, the boy who was whisked away to become a brick to build his husband's castle with. Wednesday should mean the end of the short dream.

 

Baekhyun easily understands all of this when Kai makes that turn for Lady Luck and heads for the same spot the man usually parked his car at. This is the end. He's supposed to let the memories in the penthouse become just that. _Just_ memories.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Don't run away from me anymore, understand?” Kai chuckles, just a little, before he turns the engine off. “I'll get your suitcase.”

 

Baekhyun immediately stops him and shakes his head. “No, let me do it,” he says. The younger man has already done so much for him. He can't let Kai do something so meager and, even if it weren't meager at all, he definitely can't let Kai do anything more for him. “I'm not that helpless.”

 

“What…? You’re not helpless. I don’t think of you like that at all.”

 

“Then let me do it, okay?”

 

“Okay, fine…” Kai relents, staring. After a short while, he speaks again. “By the way, I got a call this morning. From Xiumin. He said that you should take a leave from work.”

 

“Why is that? Am I fired?” Baekhyun asks immediately. He knew nothing about liquor or bars, but Xiumin still hired him because he had been very earnest.

 

“Ah—? No, no, nothing like that! Xiumin actually likes you a lot!”

 

Then why? Baekhyun doesn't understand. What use does he have if he doesn't work? How will he make money? He hasn't even found a place to stay in. He doesn't have enough money to rent an apartment. He doesn't want to become homeless.

 

“You just...can't go in Lady Luck for now,” Kai struggles to answer.

 

“Why? Did I do anything wrong? Did I break something?” Baekhyun presses, becoming slightly more desperate.

 

He can sell some of his belongings, perhaps, but he has taken little with him to begin with, just enough to fill the red suitcase. The suitcase is the only thing he received from his mother that reassured him she and Baekbeom were doing well on their own, somewhere. Selling it is as undesirable as pawning Chanyeol’s ring.

 

“Hear me out first, alright? I'm not really good at explaining things but... according to Umin-hyung, someone came looking for you,” Kai begins to explain, sighing while he runs a hand through his hair. “He said that whoever that person was, he has seen them around for a while now. Xiumin's gut feeling is always right, so if he's worried about you then I am, too. He doesn't want you in the bar as a precaution. He’s doing this for you. I don't want you going in there either but I thought—that—maybe two days might not be enough for you to trust me just yet.”

 

“I'm...I'm being stalked?”

 

“It's just a suspicion. We don't know for certain yet. Xiumin wants you to be safe. _We_ want you to be safe.”

 

Baekhyun heaves. The sight of the dashboard seems to get farther and farther away.

 

Could it be the man in the black suit? Does Master Park know where he is? Does  _Chanyeol_  know where he is? Could it be Chanyeol looking for him?

 

“I said I wasn't going to ask and that we won't talk about it unless you want to, but Baekhyun, I really do care for you, and if your spouse is someone that can hurt you, if they have the power to—”

 

“No! _No_ , he never hurt me. He  _never_  raised his hand," Baekhyun disagrees with utmost conviction. Chanyeol hasn’t looked for him, yes, but he doesn't believe Chanyeol would ever do that to him. Chanyeol wouldn’t hurt anyone like that. Chanyeol hasn't been the Happy Virus he once was, but surely— “He's not like that.”

 

“Are you sure? Has he ever scared you?” Kai asks, and he sighs for a second time when the only reply he gets is silence. “Has he, Baekhyun? Does he scare you?”

 

Rather than being scared of Chanyeol, Baekhyun is scared of being used against him. Even if Chanyeol hasn't been the best husband, Chanyeol is still his husband; the person he has chosen, the person he loves. He knows how much the company means to Chanyeol. Chanyeol’s reputation took years to carefully build. Baekhyun might never be enough to stand by Chanyeol’s side but, at the very least, he won't let himself become the reason that Chanyeol's name is tarnished.

 

How will he explain that to Kai? How? Where does he begin? Should he tell this person beside him about the person he calls his husband, knowing how powerful yet vulnerable Chanyeol’s position is?

 

“Baekhyun,” Kai’s struggle is apparent when the man speaks once more. “Tell me at least this, is your husband dangerous?”

 

“No, he wouldn't hurt anyone. Honestly, he never hurt me. He's... he was rarely even home,” Baekhyun mutters when he finally finds his voice. “I ran away because I couldn't make him happy. I believed that he couldn't be happy if I stayed.”

 

“Your husband...” Kai inhales, the sound is undeniable. He’s conflicted about how he's supposed to approach such a sensitive topic. He has avoided it for the last two days as courtesy to Baekhyun, but if there‘s any chance that the man in his passenger seat will get hurt right after he walks out of the car, then he’ll simply have to eat his own words. “I take it that your husband has money. If he has lots of it, then I also assume that he's also very important. I’m right, aren’t I?”

 

Baekhyun nods. The gesture really is nothing more than a very slight tip of the head. Anything he says from now on might be heard by Master Park or a rival company. If his silence is the only way he can help and protect Chanyeol, then he’ll continue to live this way. He shall live like this, mute and alone.

 

This is okay. Chanyeol hadn't wanted him anyway, and he didn't deserve Chanyeol to begin with. He ran away so Chanyeol could be free so he has no right to feel terrible; not about the great possibility of being replaced and definitely not about having left.

 

“Baekhyun... ah, seriously!” Kai hisses before he's revving up the car's engine again. Baekhyun looks at him in surprise, digging deeper into the seat when he reaches over and secures the seat belt back over the shorter man's chest.

 

“W-wait, what are you doing?”

 

“Xiumin said you're living with me, so we're going back to my place,” the chaebol explains. “I'm not going to wait until something happens to you before I—”

 

“And what about you? What if I really am being followed? What if they do more than just follow me around?” Baekhyun snaps, remembering how all this started with a man in a black suit coming into his childhood home. “What if you get hurt?”

 

Although his mother had given him away, it had been Master Park who made sure that he had nothing to look back to. She hadn't abandoned him, but he only realized this when Chanyeol received a package and found a letter addressed to him instead. Baekbeom wrote many more on behalf of their mother who didn't know how to write, yet it was the only letter he managed to get.

 

Baekhyun doesn't want any more of that. He doesn't want to think about the life he could've had. He doesn’t want to reach the point of hating what he has become, so he doesn't want Kai to fight for him. He doesn't want to think about Kai and his penthouse with a heavy heart when he has to leave.

 

“We’ll be alright, Baek—”

 

Two days with someone who is more than just a stranger is easier to let go than five years with someone who's been more than his first love. It's much easier to forget than the two decades he could've lived with his real family. If having a peaceful start is impossible, then he would rather voluntarily let go of it now than have someone forcefully take it from him again.

 

“No! You cannot expect me to be fine about risking you and Xiumin’s safety!”

 

“If we valued our safety over yours, we wouldn't be here right now.”

 

“Open the door,” Baekhyun tells the man in the driver's seat and, when Kai refuses, he unlocks it himself and hastens out of the Porsche.

 

Kai curses. He quickly turns the engine off again and jumps out of the car to chase after the smaller man.

 

He gave Baekhyun a choice; to leave with him or to move forward alone. He should do this. He should let Baekhyun decide because it's Baekhyun’s life. He had been nothing but a stranger two days ago, after all. But, if Baekhyun learned much about him over the last couple of days, then so has he.

 

“I don't care about money!” Kai shouts. “I don't care whether you want to keep the past to yourself or your husband is some big shot politician! Baekhyun—”

 

_“You don't know what you're saying!”_

 

There's a stinging in his eyes that Baekhyun tries to chase away. He wants to stay but he knows he can't. He can't possibly ask to stay, he can’t ask this from them. He can't possibly drag anyone else into his affairs, but what chance does he stand against a name he himself can't forget? If it truly is Master Park's doing, then how can he repay the kindness Xiumin and Kai have shown him with Master Park's cruelty?

 

“You don't even  _know_  me,” Baekhyun’s throat feels tight when he answers. He wants so much to surrender. He’s exhausted, but he must do this. He should leave. But, god, how much longer will he have to bear this…?

 

It’s Kai who responds with silence this time, and he hopes it's because the younger man is in thought. He hopes that Kai finally realizes how it makes so little sense to offer _this_ much to someone he has known for only a few months. Baekhyun doesn't want things to make sense so neither of them gets too attached. That way, it would hurt less when he becomes nothing more than a footnote in Kai's past as well.

 

“You don't know me either, Baekhyun, yet you worry about me.”

 

“You're Kai,” Baekhyun mutters, wiping his watery eyes. “You told me twice.”

 

“My real name is Kim Jongin,” Kai finds himself saying; confessing. His birth name sounds so foreign to his own ears. He hasn't heard it for so long… he hasn't used it for far longer.

 

'Kai' is for people he doesn't intend to keep. It’s for people he sleeps with and forgets the following morning, like every night’s dream. It's the name he doesn't mind nameless faces to curse at. It's not the name he wants Baekhyun to remember him by because ‘Kai’ isn’t the person he has spent the previous nights with Baekhyun as.

 

“I'm the son of the man behind K&J Enterprises. I have more money than I know how to spend. Whether it's a place to live in, or money to get away from your husband, I can help you,” for once in his life, Kai doesn’t feel ashamed of his real name. “Please, Baekhyun. Let me help you.”

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

Chanyeol does his best to live life as normally as he can.

 

He attends meetings when they're held. He personally represents his household when needed. With his father's official turnover of the company to him last year, his father has truly become his business now. It's a move his father must regret with how things have developed because it now solidifies Chanyeol's position as Park Corporation's pillar and backs up his threat if his father even touches a single strand of hair on Baekhyun's head.

 

Truthfully, however, Chanyeol doesn't know what normalcy is anymore. It used to be being cooped up in an office; in a glass cage where he reviewed proposals a hundred times over until the words blurred together. It used to be staring at the bottom of an empty glass and letting Kai talk him into drinking another shot until he couldn't remember the existence of the ring on his finger.

 

Now, normalcy is becoming the silence that comes with knowing there's supposed to be another person in his bed. It's the pervasive sense of regret when he realizes he has always been left alone like this in a big house, but he has never been as lonely as he is now. Normalcy is feeling lost without a certain while also missing them.

 

“Hey, you still there?” Sehun nudges him with a foot, just hard enough to break him out of his thoughts. “You've been awfully quiet.”

 

“Oh. Yes. No. No, I was just...” Chanyeol shakes his head, raising his glass and watching the sloshing of the scotch before sighing. “I'm just tired.”

 

“Oh…. that's it? I haven't been able to get in touch with you for months and 'I'm tired' is the only thing you can tell me?”

 

Yeah, well, what is he supposed to say? Tired is exactly what he is. He's tired of looking at a mirror and seeing the man responsible for why his house feels as empty as his heart. He’s tired of hoping for a phone call that never comes.

 

Should he tell his friends that his husband ran away, just as they often joked he would? Should he tell them how painful the past months have been for him, wanting to hear Baekhyun say his name and being reminded why Baekhyun isn’t there beside him? Even _he_ knows how stupid he would sound.

 

Chanyeol is well aware of how much he deserves this amount of hurt in his heart. It hasn't left him since the night of his and Baekhyun’s fifth anniversary. He deserves this for having broken Baekhyun's heart every night. He knows that he fucked up. He really, really did.

 

“Answer that call, maybe I'll have something else to say,” he grunts when Sehun's phone lights up for the fifth time.

 

Maybe he shouldn't have agreed to this. He should’ve just stayed home. Watching Sehun take the phone off the table to flip it over instead of heeding him is like driving a knife inside his chest or setting himself on fire. He can feel his blood boiling, knowing it could be none other than Luhan at the other end of the line, wanting to have the last of their conversations before Sehun ties the knot; wanting every second left to keep holding onto Sehun before Sehun completely becomes someone else's.

 

It reminds Chanyeol so much of the past years; of himself. It reminds him of those nights he had taken off his ring and left it somewhere Baekhyun would see. Some nights he came home to Baekhyun sleeping with a phone in one hand and his ring tucked tightly in the other. He regrets having made all those memories now.

 

He would make the most of it, if he were Sehun. If he were Oh Sehun, he would take all the chances he could get with Luhan and spend every waking moment he could afford for them to be together instead of acting as if _just_ one name hadn't spent ten years on his lips. If it were Baekhyun calling him like that, right now, he would be out of this place and he would be driving to wherever Baekhyun was, in a heartbeat.

 

But, while the person he loves is begging to talk to him from the other side of the world, all that Oh Sehun does is frown and sigh, “I’m doing what’s best for him, hyung.”

 

“How is breaking his heart the best for him?” Chanyeol tips his head back and lets the bitter taste of alcohol trickle down inside his throat and fill him. It still isn’t worse than knowing he's the reason why Baekhyun doesn't want to go back to him; than what he’s feeling.

 

“Keeping contact with me won’t help him move on. He doesn't deserve someone who can't stand up for him. He shouldn’t—he just deserves someone so much better than I am,” Sehun replies later after having filled his glass for the fourth time. “We both know that I can’t be the person he wants me to be right now. There is no happy ending for us.”

 

Sehun cares about Luhan more than Sehun cares about his own image, about what others may think of him, or about being alone. That’s the difference between Sehun and the jerk Chanyeol had been. Chanyeol was just an unbearably selfish man who hadn’t known how lucky he was to be married to someone who whole-heartedly loved him.

 

Chanyeol hoped a conversation with his long-time friends would do him good. If not, then he thought it would at least bring him just a bit closer to attaining the littlest sense of normalcy he could get but here he is, realizing why his marriage blew up into this big mess in the first place. They’re all just rich, spoiled boys who inevitably grew older into richer, spoiled men.

 

“Does Kai know?” he asks, lips forming a frown when the younger chaebol takes out a cigarette pack. He rips it out of Sehun’s hands and places it on his side where the latter can’t reach it without standing up.

 

“No, not yet,” Sehun huffs with a glare directed at him before resorting back to drinking. “It’s not that I haven’t been able to talk to him, he just... lately, he’s been so… happy. He even called the other week. You’re not going to believe this, but he asked what he should stuff his fridge with.”

 

“What? What for? He doesn’t live in his house. He doesn’t even go there.”

 

“Right? I asked Xiumin hyung and he confirmed that Kai hasn't been in the bar for a while.”

 

At least one of them is a happy, Chanyeol tells himself, but he cannot fathom how Kai of all people can keep a relationship. Kai is a terrible flirt and liar, everyone who knows the guy _knows_ this. Kai revels in the pleasure of all things temporary and escapes before the consequences can come to grab and trap him. If Kai really _has_ met someone, someone who's more important than the 'freedom' he used to insist was Chanyeol's right, then maybe 'Kai' hasn’t completely killed off the side of him that was still Kim Jongin yet.

 

“But he hasn't told you,” Chanyeol replies, glancing the direction of the veranda where the person in question disappeared to.

 

“Nope, not everything, just that it's... ‘complicated’,” Sehun responds and quotes the last word with his fingers.

 

Complicated? How complicated can it be when Kai has all the benefits of being a chaebol on top of being able to choose? Kai wouldn't lose as much as any of them would. Kai doesn't have to worry about dragging his parents' name through the mud if he ever gets caught in a scandal. Kai doesn't have to break the love of his life's heart to expand his father's business. Kai is free to love whoever he wishes. How complicated can that be compared to what they're going through?

 

There's already a slight buzzing in Chanyeol's head when haughty Kim ‘Kai’ Jongin struts back in, making the smile on the latter's face a little too smug, a little too taunting; just like all those times that Kai would fill a glass and hand it over to him and convince him to take just one last shot before he goes. Every time, he knew that Baekhyun was waiting for him. Right now, he can’t believe he accepted that shot each time; that each of those shots led to another, and then another, and another, just like this. Even now, he lets Kai hand him shot after shot until the buzz becomes an ocean in his ears and he forgets that he ever thought of going home.

 

Chanyeol hates it. He hates himself. He hates getting drunk. He hates being sober without Baekhyun. Maybe he hates Kai too, more than he hates the buzz in his head. He hates that Kai has been happy the entire time he has been miserable.

 

“Kris isn't going to make it at all, is he?”

 

It’s Kai who asks.

 

“Should we pretend to be surprised? He hasn’t made it in years,” Sehun shrugs. “You'd think one or two months would be enough to get over her but no. He’s free of that cold bitch, and yet he’s spending his freedom pining. He even wants their kid to actually know him despite the settlement.”

 

“He was stupid for agreeing to that divorce if he didn't want it in the first place.”

 

“Can you blame him?”

 

Chanyeol answers ‘No’ in his mind.

 

Kris was told to marry, so he did. Kris hadn't expected to actually fall in love with his wife. Maybe they can blame Kris for promising to stay cordial after he parted ways with the woman, but Chanyeol can't really blame Kris for wanting to keep being a part of her life than to relinquish any part in it at all, now that he’s irrevocably in love with her. If he were Kris, he would rather be something than nothing at all, too.

 

“Well, forget about him,” Kai waves his hand to dismiss the topic before he notices the elusive ring on Chanyeol's finger and smiles. “How are things on your end? Finally made up? Or has your saintly spouse discovered the advantages of being left alone?”

 

“I don't want to talk about it,” Chanyeol's answers with a grunt. He dislikes the way that the younger man said it, but he doesn’t want to ruin one of the few nights Sehun has left as a bachelor. Besides, it's always better to ignore things that irk him.

 

Sensing the tense atmosphere, Sehun chimes in, “I picked up news at Lady Luck.”

 

“What news?” Kai questions. “I doubt Xiumin hyung willingly told you anything.”

 

“Of course he did! He’s nicer to me~ He said he has fewer disgruntled patrons now that nobody's trying to leave the bar with their girlfriends. You know what, I think you trying to sleep with someone else’s girlfriend is the only reason why Xiumin hyung is aging.”

 

Someone else's girlfriend…

 

 _Someone else's_.

 

Kai releases an unsure laugh instead of quickly denying it. 

 

Chanyeol shuts his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest as he leans back into his seat. He tries to bury the image that his father showed him, that of Baekhyun with another man. He doesn't even really remember it anymore, he didn’t look at it any longer than a split second, but that shortest moment won’t let him forget his husband's smile.

 

“Holy shit, you’re not denying it,” Sehun blanches. “So it's true then? You're really seeing someone?"

 

“No, I'm not dating them!” their group’s playboy shakes his head. “I’m hoping for the possibility, though, in the future. But right now it’s… not really…”

 

“In the future,” their youngest deadpans. “I thought the end of the world will have more anarchy and distraught naked people running around. Who are you and what have you done to Kai?”

 

“Don't be so dramatic,” Kai makes a chuckle right before he rubs the back of his neck. “I told you before, it's just... complicated right now.”

 

“Just tell me how fucking 'complicated' it is!”

 

Chanyeol stares at their reflection on his shot glass. There’s a tiny image of his friends on the surface of his glass. He doesn't want to listen to them anymore. His glass is empty now. He still feels the buzz, it keeps buzziing. Won’t stop. It seems to get worse every time Kai talks, but he can't stop the words from creeping into his ears.

 

“Fine. They're married.  _That's_  how complicated it is,” Kai spills, already knowing it would catch everyone else off guard, so he takes a chug of his own drink and adds, “They're married but only one of them is in love.”

 

“Married!” Sehun is definitely shouting. “Kim fucking Jongin, they're  _married_? Are you kidding me?! You’re messing around with a—”

 

“It's not what you think!”

 

“What  _are_  we supposed to think?” Chanyeol finally decides to interrupt. Of all people to choose, the guy picks someone who's already spoken for, for god's sake!

 

“I did not steal them, okay? Give me a fucking break, guys. We met. They needed someone. They had nowhere else to go so I took them in.”

 

“Your explanation just makes it worse,” Sehun grimaces. “Are you fucking, then? Is it a relationship about comfort…? Fuck, only one of them may be in love, but they're still married.”

 

“I know, I know, alright?” Kai answers, holding his hands up for them all to shut up and as a form of surrender. “But if their husband can't appreciate them and wants to become single, then... then they’re better off not staying together.”

 

The steely expression on Chanyeol's face spirals into a scowl.

 

The image of Baekhyun flashes in his mind's eye again. He didn't even bother to look at the other man's face, but now he's tortured with the image of Kai in his place. It's Kai making his husband smile and it sends a faint ringing in his ears to accompany the buzz in his head. He feels… anger.

 

Across him, Sehun makes a snort of disbelief. “So it's serious? You're serious about this person? The Kai I know wouldn't be talking like this.”

 

“Yeah. It's... Yes, I am,” Kai nods. “I guess I'm serious about them. We’re not messing around. It’s not like that with them. We’re… Right now, I just want them to move on. I want to be the one to help them.”

 

 _‘Move on,’_ is what Kai said, but all that Chanyeol heard is _, ‘I want someone I shouldn’t have.’_

 

“Damn… I think we need something harder for this talk,” The youngest gestures to their empty glasses before slipping out of the table. “I'll go get us stronger drinks.”

 

The men left in the booth sit in silence once their wait begins, with one tracing the cold rim of a glass while the other is trying to unfurl his fists under the table.

 

“I heard you hired a new secretary,” it’s Kai who speaks first.

 

“I did.”

 

“Sehun told me you've been firing your people left and right.”

 

“They're my father's, not mine.”

 

“Chanyeol… what happened?” Kai asks, placing his just as empty glass on a side. “We couldn't get a hold of you for months.”

 

The frown on Chanyeol's face dips lower in its corners when he answers, “I've been busy.”

 

“But you're  _always_  busy,” the other man counters. “I'm surprised your spouse hasn’t gotten tired of waiting for you to come home every night.”

 

It's just the wrong,  _wrong_  thing to say, however, to a married man who's been at his wits' end for months now, searching and fighting his own family for a husband who would rather be at the other side of the world than beside him.

 

“You want to talk about it?  _Fine_. Let's talk about it. I’m married to a man. He’s missing. Let's talk about how he packed his things on the night of our anniversary and left, shall we?” Chanyeol snaps, slamming his glass down hard and glaring all the while at the man who has been so supportive of his negligence over the past years. “Or better yet, why don't we talk about how you used to throw my phone at the hands of the easiest slut in the bar? What's marriage anyway, right? As long as there's no ring in sight and everyone gets their share of fun, it’s all good, isn’t it?”

 

Maybe it's the alcohol talking, maybe it's the pain. Everything just reminds him of Baekhyun, every little thing that isn’t even connected to Baekhyun screams _Baekhyun_ to him, and seeing Kai again just brings him back to all those times he could have been more of a real husband than a mere man with a wedding ring.

 

“You can blame me all you want but I never forced you.  _You_  chose to listen to me, so blame yourself, Chanyeol,” Kai spits back.

 

Before he knows it, he has knocked over the booth and they're both at each other's throats; hissing, snarling, “It’s just like you to leave things a mess and say you had nothing to do with it, huh, Jongin?”

 

Maybe there’s glass breaking beneath their feet. Maybe it’s just Chanyeol’s muddled mind mixing the past and what he wants it to have been like. Maybe he’s utterly so sick of being helpless and feeling lost without Baekhyun there. He had been so confident that Baekhyun wouldn't ever leave, so confident that he had forgotten Baekhyun could have chosen anyone else but the son of the man who took him away from his family…

 

“If you love him, Yeol, let him be happy without you.”

 

After all, he’s the one who listened to Baekhyun cry from the other side of the bathroom door, waiting for the curse that should have followed his name but never came. He's the one who let his father ridicule his own husband in front of him. He's the fool who didn’t even know he was happy until he wasn't anymore.

  

“All you do is sleep around,” Chanyeol’s voice cracks. “What the hell do you possibly know about love?”

 

“I know how not to be a shitty husband, thanks to you.”

 

Kai's right. No matter how much he wants to blame Kai for being an enabler, it's still him who let things get to this point.

 

He hasn't heard Baekhyun laugh in four years. He misses it. He misses Baekhyun so much.

 

He should let Baekhyun go. All he has done is hurt Baekhyun anyway. He should let Baekhyun go.

 

Baekhyun deserves to be happy, even if it means ever seeing each other again.

 

_“What the fuck, guys? Break it up! Stop! Kai—”_

 

He should let Baekhyun go, shouldn’t he?

 

But will it be too selfish to ask for even just a day? Will it still be selfish if he asks for even just an hour to get on his knees and beg for Baekhyun's forgiveness? Even just a minute will do. Just a short moment.

 

He just wants to see Baekhyun. He wants to see his husband. He misses Baekhyun so much.

 

Baekhyun... is Baekhyun happy right now? Is he happy to get away? Is he never going to come back? Not at all?

 

Baekhyun—

 

_“—ly shit! Let him go! Let him go, Chanyeol!”_

 

But he can't let Baekhyun go.

 

He can’t.

 

He can't.

 

_He can't._

❀

Chanyeol dreams of the door to their room opening.

 

The edge of the bed sinks then there's light being shed over the lids of his eyes. The light disappears before a voice begins to speak. It’s talking to him, asking him how he's been… it’s telling him how grateful it is that he uses their room now to sleep instead of his study.

 

He shouldn't catch a cold, it says. The voice is softer than what he's used to hearing. It's clearer now without the sobbing. It's Baekhyun's voice, he's absolutely sure of it, and it sounds so,  _so_  close.

 

Chanyeol knows that dreams are cruel. He knows that there's no one there; whether beside him or in his room. He’s alone. There is only a small amount of light pouring from one side. Light he can’t touch.  _Baekhyun_.

 

Baekhyun starts speaking to him again… a  _‘How was your day?’_ spoken like a balm to the blisters the distance between them has made. The  _‘Please take care of yourself’_  that follows is a soft lullaby to calm the restless thoughts of self-blame. His husband’s warm voice tells him the things he has heard before, things he never truly thought to appreciate until Baekhyun whispers,  _‘You're going to be happier from now on.’_

 

_How…?_

_How can you say I'll be happier?_

_What part of me is happy to be without you?_

 

Chanyeol wants to ask if he is; if Baekhyun is happier without him, because it's been more than half a year but he _still_ feels like he just lost a huge part of himself. The heartache continues to linger, hurting and hurting so much as if it were still the first night he spent without Baekhyun beside him.

 

He wants to ask if Baekhyun ever knew that he had been one of his dreams as a boy; that he really loved Baekhyun in return, and that they were real. They could be real. He wants to ask if it's really too late for the both of them and if there is absolutely nothing in the world that he can possibly do to keep being a part of Baekhyun's life.

 

When Chanyeol wakes, his eyes are damp and his chest is heavy with the bits and pieces of his dream. The throbbing of his head is incomparable to the pain of his heart. He doesn't know which hurts more, being told  _goodbye_  when he finally wanted to say  _I love you,_ or finding the divorce papers that Baekhyun already signed.

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

While Baekhyun was still a wee child, he had been more wary of what people hid behind a smile.

 

After being adopted by Master Park, he had to learn how to distinguish which smiles were real and which ones were not. He learned that real smiles are like sunshine and are impossible to hide because they seep through cracks and burst in every space they could reach to spread warmth. It became the easiest thing to do, telling smiles apart, after he met the one person who smiled like every time was his first time seeing the world in color.

 

Only when Kai reminds him of how easy it still is to distinguish smiles, does he realize that he spent the past years convincing himself that things—the world—has always been only black and white.

 

Kai smiles at the little girl and her new puppy from the floor below. Kai smiles when he sees his fridge filled with all kinds of greens and food for the first time in a while. Kai smiles so often.

 

Maybe it's because Baekhyun is used to smiles that show off two rows of teeth that he has never completely noticed the simple curving of those full lips or the twinkling of Kai's eyes. Even when he’s merely delivering the bath towel that the man has forgotten, Kai smiles at him like a puppy beams at its carer. He's unsure what to feel about the realization that Kai loves to smile, and that it's somehow brighter when it's just the two of them.

 

“Go take a bath,” Baekhyun grumbles as he pushes against the chaebol, whose fingers are latching onto his towel to throw it over his shoulder. He looks at the slender digits, then at the closed door behind his housemate. Really, he looks at anything else that isn’t another man’s smooth skin leading down to a tanned chest.

 

“What if I don’t want to?”

 

Kai is smiling again. Teasingly, this time.

 

“You're wasting hot water,” Baekhyun reasons, but who knows how much he himself has wasted earlier when he had fallen asleep in the tub. He turns to head back to the kitchen, only for a hand to stop him in his tracks and turn him back around. Before he can protest, Kai pulls the towel around his neck.

 

“Dry yourself properly. You look like a drenched puppy,” the younger man scolds him, clicking his own tongue. “Look at your shirt. It’s wet now. Ya, you'll catch a cold like that.”

 

 _‘Too close,’_ Baekhyun's mind warns when Kai inches closer to dry his hair, pressing warm skin against the last of his flimsy shirts. How stupid of him to have remembered to hand over someone else's towel while forgetting his own pants. He pulls away from Kai just in time to sneeze, wincing at the momentary pain and sniffling in his only shirt, now wet and cold because of the water dripping from his hair.

 

“You should take another bath,” the other man comments. “Take a hot one.”

 

“I'll just change clothes.”

 

“But you don't have any left, do you?” Kai asks, stifling a smirk because they both know there is no arguing against the truth.

 

“Alright. Okay. I'll take another when you're done,” Baekhyun snatches his towel out of the other's hands and wraps it back around his neck in a poor attempt to make himself warm. Or warmer.

 

He can wait. Kai showers fast and doesn't fall asleep when the water gets too comfortable. He'll wait. He pushes Kai for a second time into his luxurious, marbled bathroom and closes the door behind him, setting out for the kitchen again with the hopes of prepping the next meal until the door whips open.

 

Never one for surprises, he jumps out of his skin when Kai traps him in an unsolicited embrace and sweeps him off the ground. There's no telling apart the droplets from his hair and the tears from his eyes when he is whisked away to the bathroom again, left with no choice but to cling onto the childish flirt or risk being dropped.

 

“Put me down!”

 

“Trust me!”

 

“No! I can't! No, no, no! Stop!” Baekhyun shrieks, beyond caring if he's already strangling his captor with how tight his arms are wound around Kai’s neck.

 

He has never felt his life to be in danger until he feels them both tilting and falling into the spacious tub. But the splash never happens. Instead, Kai's hands remain snug under his thighs, supporting him until they reach the edge.

 

“What did I tell you?” Kai laughs when he finally opens his eyes. He can just feel the thumping both of their hearts make in each other's chest, one beating fast with less glee than the other.

 

“I told you to stop,” Baekhyun hiccups in the younger's arms, shrinking into the crook of Kai’s neck to hide the tears pooling even more in his own eyes' corners.

 

“And I did, didn't I?”

 

 _‘Too close,’_ Kai's mind warns when Baekhyun pulls away, just enough for him to see reddened eyes and flushed cheeks. Baekhyun is frowning at him, unamused by his little stunt. He shouldn't find it attractive, but he does. _So much._ He finds everything that Baekhyun does, and  _is_ , so attractive that it's almost pathetic.

 

“Not fast enough,” Baekhyun continues to whine, reminding him of a small puppy, while still straddled on his lap, with both legs dipping into warm water.

 

 _‘Too damn close,’_ his mind warns him again, especially when his hands feel hot against Baekhyun's cool skin, just underneath the hem of the shirt he's playing with.

 

Baekhyun has to realize how dangerous the distance between them is. They've never been this close. Kai has never let himself be this close because he knows what he is… _weak_.

 

Kai wipes the last of the married man’s tears away with the pad of a thumb and grips the edge of the tub. He shouldn't touch Baekhyun like this. He shouldn’t be this near Baekhyun. Not yet. Baekhyun is off limits.

 

He can wait, he tells himself. He'll wait, he decides, after Baekhyun rubs his eyes and the flush of his cheeks finally goes away and he starts to wiggle off of him.

 

“Hurry up and take a bath. You'll catch a cold if you keep playing around without a shirt,” Baekhyun is the one to scold him this time, finally able to get his legs out of the water and off Kai's lap to look for his fallen towel.

 

Just as he takes his first step, he’s pulled back by the arm. His lips meet another pair just as his eyes force themselves close and he whimpers. They’re kissing, he and Kai, and he’s moaning into the lip-lock because Kai expertly gets his lips to part and makes him weaker with _just_ one kiss that is long, hard, and just _so good_ that he has no choice but to catch his breath when it’s over too soon.

 

Baekhyun is stumbling—his knees are suddenly _so_ weak—until there are hands on his waist to help steady him, guiding him forward to sink on Kai’s lap. Once settled, he can feel a palm press against his stomach, riding his damp shirt upwards, while Kai's mouth presses hotly against his jaw, nipping at the skin and planting a mark that will certainly be impossible to hide. It could have been himself pulling for that third kiss, perhaps it was Kai refusing to let him escape, but everything else simply blurs with the roaming of a knowledgeable mouth and warm hands, touching and fondling him in all the right places.

 

“Baekhyun… _babe_ ,” Kai groans; with need, in lust.

 

Baekhyun spreads his legs for friction, gasping when Kai grips his wrists and kisses the shell of his sensitive ear. His breath is laboured now. He hasn’t been loved this way in a long while… he can’t even remember the last time he shared a bed with Chanyeol.

 

_Oh no—_

 

Chanyeol.

 

If not for the buzzer of the main door setting off, the last threads keeping him together would have been far from enough to flick Baekhyun back to awareness.

 

His heart is marching wildly when he pulls away from Kai, whose gaze immediately darkens at the interruption and exasperatedly runs a hand through his bright hair, obviously ruffled, but nonetheless, Kai agrees to let him go.

 

“G-go take a bath,” Baekhyun croaks, cheeks deeply flushed, and hastens out of the bathroom after receiving a wordless nod.

 

He hurries to answer the door, smoothing out his dishevelled, over-sized shirt on the way. He wipes at his lips with the back of his hand and puts a hand over his chest, willing his heart to stop beating so fast and painting a smile on his face before he opens the door.

 

Baekhyun’s heart skips and sinks both at the same time when he finds the man waiting at the other side.

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

“Baekhyun...”

 

Chanyeol's eyes are wide in shock as they rake in the sight of Baekhyun. As his gaze sweeps over the state of his runaway husband—recognizing a tinge of delicate pink staining the skin of his husband’s cheeks and a kind of rawness that he knows very well on Baekhyun's neck—Park Chanyeol's expression turns dark. He can feel his anger spurn his blood to a quick boil as he strides past Baekhyun.

 

“Where the hell is Jongin?” the young Park heir demands with a bellow. _“Where the fuck is the bastard?”_

“Ch-Chanyeol, wait!” Baekhyun shouts as he runs to catch up to the furious giant, who only yanks himself free.

 

He has never dealt with an angry Chanyeol before. Chanyeol has never been this angry. This new side of his husband scares Baekhyun, but he can't let his soon-to-be ex-husband ravage someone else's house, and so he tries again. He keeps trying to get in Chanyeol's way until they reach the door to Kai's room and Chanyeol stops to stare down at him, eyes cold while ordering him to move out of the way.

 

Before Baekhyun can respond, the door behind Chanyeol swings open.

 

Kai emerges from the bathroom then, shirt from this morning haphazardly thrown back on, and pulls his friend by the shoulder to face him. “What the fuck do you think you're doing, Park?”

 

“What the fuck are you doing with my husband?” Chanyeol growls back, grabbing fistfuls of the other's shirt. “Is  _this_  why you've been telling me to give up? So you can steal him?”

 

Kai knew how desperate he was to make things right. He knew _. He knew._ Kai must have been laughing at him all this time, gloating and partying as he broke apart trying to search for Baekhyun. He continued searching even if the leads have already turned cold. As it turns out, while he had been busy looking for Baekhyun, the man he called his _friend_ had been enjoying the company of his husband the entire time.

 

The papers from the other day, the divorce papers with Baekhyun's signatures, Chanyeol had hoped they were a prank. A stupid, sick prank for having let things get out of hand last time; for starting a fight in Sehun’s house, because what was he supposed to believe when he discovered that the papers he dreaded to receive were sent by a friend he's known for years? How could he just believe it without confirming the betrayal with his own eyes?

 

“Stealing? Is that what you call taking care of the husband you neglected?” Kai pushes him back with a hard shove against his chest. “Didn't you spend the last four years so eager to give him away?”

 

“And you were just so willing to goad me on, weren't you? To make sure I do,” Chanyeol's back hits the hard surface of the closed bedroom door. Baekhyun draws a sharp breath at his side, reaching out to him and flinching when he stops the hand from inching closer. He doesn't want him to get hurt. He's never hurt Baekhyun before. He doesn't want to start.

 

But the subtle rejection for help hurts Baekhyun, and Kai knows it. He has seen hurt flash in Baekhyun’s expression countless of times before. He hates it, he fucking _hates_ seeing Baekhyun hurt.

 

“Why don't you? You already have the papers, don't you?” Kai spits at his old friend. He had been holding back for the sake of the man who owns both of their hearts, but now it makes him just as livid to know that the fool had been Chanyeol all along. Chanyeol had the _audacity_ to take someone like Baekhyun for granted. 

 

“Stop! Stop this!” Baekhyun screams at the both of them, rushing to get in between them.

 

Kai uses Chanyeol split moment's distraction to tackle the older chaebol to the ground. It's Chanyeol who throws the first punch and the one that sends the younger staggering off of him. Kai winces at his burst lip, torn and bleeding a vibrant red just like the other's cheek. Chanyeol rises easily back on his feet, taking steps closer to the chaebol until Baekhyun cries for them to stop once more, planting himself in between them for a second time to protect Kai.

 

“Baekhyun, stay out of this,” Chanyeol coldly says, and he watches his husband shake his own head.

 

Baekhyun only places delicate hands on his chest to push him, again and again, for as many times as he insists on moving forward.

 

“ _I said to stay out of this!_ ” Chanyeol roars after having let his feelings get the better of him. His voice is much louder than he intended and it elicits an involuntary whimper out of his precious spouse.

 

He just shouted at Baekhyun… he has never shouted at Baekhyun before. He realizes how big of a mistake he has done when the tears start to come. Baekhyun's hands are ice, and they don't stop shaking even when he takes them in his bigger palms.

 

Baekhyun is...

 

Baekhyun is terrified of him.

 

“Do you love him?” Chanyeol stifles his volume when he asks, swallowing a growing lump in his throat while guiding his husband's head to his chest and wrapping an arm around Baekhyun’s waist. It's the first act of affection that he lets himself make, surprising both his friend and husband.

 

He rests his chin on Baekhyun's head while rubbing the man’s back. He does this until Baekhyun stops trembling; not until the tears cease because it takes longer for Baekhyun to completely calm down. Up until the moment he lets go, Baekhyun doesn't give him an answer.

 

Chanyeol supposes that silence, in itself, already is. It’s not the answer he wants, but it’s still the man he loves’ answer, so he steps back and looks away when Kai’s hand rests on his husband’s shoulder. It doesn’t get turned away. It makes him angrier, jealousy surges inside of him once again, but what can he do…?

 

There’s…

 

There’s nothing to _do_ anymore, is there…?

 

“Chanyeol,” he doesn’t understand what that is on Baekhyun’s face when his husband looks at him, but he decides that it must be fear. Baekhyun looks so afraid of him.

 

“I came here because of this,” Chanyeol says, the words are bitter in his mouth, when he plucks the forgotten brown envelope from where it fell. He holds it up for both Kai and Baekhyun to see. “These are the divorce papers. With your signature. I received them this morning.”

 

“I'm sorry, Baekhyun, but I will not sign them. I will never agree to this,” He continues, gaze fixed on his teary husband as he takes the envelope in both of his hands and cleanly rips it apart, down the middle. “I'm not letting you divorce me, I'm not going to give you to him. I would rather have you prosecute me than let you be with someone else.”

 

When Chanyeol disappears through the door, it takes a short while to sink into Baekhyun that he just watched his husband leave; that his husband has found him; that his husband thinks he has fallen in love with someone else. His senses come back to him then, and he rushes out of the door as well to chase after the man he had been trying so hard to forget for the last seven months.

 

But Chanyeol, the man he married because of love—

 

Chanyeol is already gone.

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

When he comes back to the apartment, Kai is there waiting for him, putting back together as much as he could.

 

“That could have gone better, couldn't it?” Kai smiles. It still isn’t as wide or as bright as what Baekhyun is used to seeing, but it’s still just as real. “Honestly speaking, your husband has always been a little short-tempered.”

 

“Let me fix you up, then we'll go to a hospital, okay?” Baekhyun responds as he walks to where he remembers seeing the first-aid kit, but Kai clings weakly to his shirt, keeping him in place.

 

“No, just stay here. I’m fine. It doesn't hurt anyway.”

 

“Don't be ridiculous! You're still bleeding—”

 

“It doesn't really matter,” Kai interrupts, pulling out a chair and staring up at him. “What matters is you aren't.”

 

“How can you say that?” Baekhyun asks while wiping his eyes in hopes to get rid of the stinging feeling. It’s back. Why? “How can you still say that when hurt is all you've gotten since we've met?!”

 

“You make it sound so bad, getting hurt trying to make it better for you. Haven't you ever thought that it's because I choose to be? What's so bad about standing up for you, Baekhyun?” is what the younger man replies. Kai’s voice is softer; a little unsure, a little anxious. “I want you to be safe. I want you to be happy. I want you to have a home you wouldn't think of running away from. I want to give you so much that you wouldn't worry about not being enough.”

 

Baekhyun doesn't ask why; why offer this much for someone who has nothing to offer back? Why give everything to someone who cannot return your feelings? He doesn’t ask anymore because, somewhere, in the back of his mind, he already knows. He has always known. And so does Kai.

 

That's why Kai doesn't say it, because saying it, voicing out, will force him to react; to give an answer; to say yes or no. It could only be a resolute yes or a no. Kai deserves an answer that is unhesitant as the way Kai has cared for him.

 

They're friends, they really are, but… can they be more than that? Should he give Kai this chance? Is this the new start he’s supposed to have? Kai has been more of a husband to him in less than a year than Chanyeol had ever been in five. It should be obvious what the better choice to make is, but it's not.

 

Baekhyun picks up the scattered pieces of the envelope and thinks that it looks just like what his heart feels like, ripped apart and torn into two.

 

He doesn't deserve to go back to Chanyeol, but he doesn't deserve to move on with Kai.

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

Kai catches Baekhyun staring at his phone often after that; fiddling with it, turning it over like what Sehun used to do to avoid looking at its screen, just to flip it back over again. Baekhyun thinks he doesn't see it, that he doesn't notice how Baekhyun’s mind is fleeting, but really, he has watched Baekhyun do it before, back when the latter had first arrived at Lady Luck and was still no more than a lost pup who lined the corners of his own eyes with charcoal black to mask the hint of redness in them.

 

He finally decides to ask when they have to go back to ordering food from the hotel's kitchen because Baekhyun overcooks dinner, burning steak until it's charred. He's not going to wait until Baekhyun burns one of his hands as well. He’s worried about Baekhyun, but there's nothing he can do when Baekhyun only responds with what he wants to hear and it gives him no other choice but to leave it at that.

 

One day, Baekhyun forgets his phone atop the kitchen counter. The mobile is placed on top of the envelope housing the new set of signed divorce papers.

 

Kai unlocks the phone easily since there is no lock. It’s empty, save for the operating system’s default apps, the messages he and Baekhyun have exchanged before, and a string of numbers on its screen. The only contacts the phone has are his and Xiumin’s aside from the phone number, saved without a name. Curious, he selects the strange number and proceeds to press 'call', holding the phone close to his ear.

 

Truth be told, he felt joy when Baekhyun said he has decided.

 

But, when he hears none other than Chanyeol's voice from the other end, Kai has to accept that with Baekhyun, there will always be _just_ one answer.

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

Chanyeol expects many things to come to his doorstep; the proposal for the next board meeting from his secretary, a notice of a lawsuit against him for assaulting his friend in his own house, his lawyer's legal counsel regarding an unwanted divorce, just to name the top of his list. What he doesn't expect, however, is the man he expects the lawsuit from to be ushered straight to his study by a flustered maid.

 

“Let's talk,” Kai says the moment the maid leaves them to their discretion.

 

“What is there to talk about?” Chanyeol immediately, and bitterly, replies. “I'm not going to say sorry.”

 

Why should he? Kai already has as much as he does. Kai has money. Kai has freedom. In fact, Kai has much more than he does, now that Kai has the man he loves, as well.

 

“I'm not going to sue if you listen to what I have to say.”

 

“What makes you think I care whether or not we meet in court?”

 

“Because I know you care about Baekhyun,” Kai responds, ignoring the prickle it makes to his own heart.

 

Without waiting for a response, he beats Chanyeol from speaking and tells the man of how he met Baekhyun seven months ago. He relays the struggles Baekhyun faced whilst trying to get back on his two feet despite knowing little about the world outside of Chanyeol. He tells Chanyeol of the things anyone who has ever loved has feared, in some way and at some point; of other men with darker motives getting a hold of his husband.

 

Chanyeol glares at him when he admits to having been one of those men with ill intentions, at first.

 

“And I'm supposed to believe you?” Chanyeol questions, a dark cloud covering his features when he remembers what he saw when he arrived at Kai's apartment. “That nothing happened between you two?”

 

He knows how Kai is. Once the younger man sets his eyes on someone, he doesn't stop until he gets them. No one has rejected Kai before, that's why Chanyeol can't help but be angry.

 

They've known each other for as long as he has known Baekhyun. Even longer than that, perhaps. Kai is his friend, and he has always thought—no, _believed­—_ that  _that_  meant something to Kai; that Kai would know better than to choose the person he already chose. There would be no repairing himself or mending their friendship, whatever there is of it left, if Kai says yes; if this man in front of him confesses of having taken Baekhyun to his bed.

 

And so, it's a huge weight being lifted off of Chanyeol's chest when Kai takes a deep breath and says, “No.”

 

No because every time Kai tried, Baekhyun rejected him. No because Kai knew of the ring. No because the ring was always there, wrapped around one of Baekhyun's fingers like the biggest reminder in the world that he already belongs to someone else. No because Kai wanted Baekhyun in his life than not at all, even if it meant holding back for the first time in his life.

 

“Why are you telling me this?” Chanyeol asks, unwilling to let himself hope just yet.

 

Maybe there's a catch. There's _always_ a catch. Everything demands compensation, after all, especially when he and Kai are both businessmen by blood and in love with the same man.

 

Things can never be the same if Kai asks for Baekhyun. He won't give up the man who's already his everything. He _can’t_.

 

But Kai doesn’t ask for him to give way.

 

Instead, Kai asks him to bring Baekhyun back to where he belongs—

 

Back home.

 

“If you love him... if you love him as much as you say you do, let him know,” Kai finds his voice again, finally taking the envelope tucked under his arm and placing it on Chanyeol's desk. “All this time, hearing it from you is what he has been waiting for.

 

“It has always been you, Yeol,” He continues, every word becoming a crack on his own broken heart. “Just you.”

 

Chanyeol opens his mouth to speak, but the other simply shakes his head at him.

 

“You should go. Tell him,” His friend says, grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing him out of his own study.

 

“Jongin—”

 

“Just go, you idiot. Fucking _go_ , okay?” Kai hisses, and the younger man resorts to shoving him when he tries to turn around and speak again. “Hurry up and go.”

 

Chanyeol nods dumbly at his friend's insistence, numb until Kai’s phone rings because Baekhyun is calling, and he dashes towards and down the grand staircase of his mansion, shouting for the valet. He doesn't look back at Kim Jongin who’s telling his husband to wait before finally letting himself crumble in the empty study.

 

It's not yet too late…

 

_It's not yet too late._

 

Baekhyun will be happy soon.

 

 

 

❀

 

 

 

“Kim Jongin, where are you?” Baekhyun asks as soon as his phone rings.

 

Kai said he was going out to buy groceries this afternoon. It's evening now and Kai still isn't home. Where the hell has this young man gone to?

 

It worried him, and he would've kept worrying if Kai hadn't replied with a chuckle from his end. “I had too much fun at the grocery. Ah~ I might have bought too much. Will you help me bring them up? I'm here at the parking area right now.”

 

“Eh? Sure, I'll be there in a sec.”

 

How strange. Baekhyun wonders how Kai can possibly have trouble with too much groceries when there are always people ready to attend to him. In all honesty, Kai is pretty spoiled, and the spoiling doesn’t even really start with the moment the man’s car returns. It’s a good thing that Kai isn’t a brat.

 

Baekhyun wipes his hands clean before making his way out of the apartment. The automated lock settles into place when the door shuts behind him and he starts to walk towards the exclusive elevator at the end of the hall. Regardless of how strange he thinks Kai is being, Baekhyun steps into the lift and patiently waits until it reaches the level of the parking that’s seriously too big for just Kai’s car and the hotel’s usual VIPs.

 

The runaway Park jogs towards the usual spot, expecting Kai to already be carrying bags out of his car. He doesn't find the white Porsche there, however. Maybe it's in the other spot, he thinks, so he turns and begins to walk some more. The sight of luxury cars is always special, it just doesn't really faze him anymore when he has spent much of his life seeing them.

 

When he makes the turn leading to the second parking spot, though, his heart makes a leap.

 

It's a Maserati. A _black_ Maserati.

 

Baekhyun takes the steps towards the car, feeling a strange sense of numbness prickling the pads of his fingertips when he touches its cold hood. It looks exactly like the one that is often in his dreams, where Chanyeol knows the words to his songs and sings along instead of breaking his heart. The real thing looks more surreal than the vivid details of his dream…

 

He tries to stop himself from thinking how nice it would be, if it really were Chanyeol's car. He doesn't want to think of Chanyeol anymore. Hope just hurts too much.

 

Baekhyun takes a step back from the car before taking his phone out of his pocket to call Kai, but when he recognizes the number on the car plate, it is hope that suddenly makes the most sense.

 

His call is immediately rejected when it connects, terminating it before he receives a text.

 

 _Who are you looking for, Baekhyun?_  the message reads. Sent from the number without a name _. Will you turn around if it's me?_

 

A small smile is gracing Park Chanyeol's lips when he _does_ turn. It looks a little unsure, a little nervous. It’s nothing like any of the ones from the past, etched in his memory, but there's no doubt that the line on those full lips truly _is_ a smile, and there's no denying the tiny seed of happiness that takes root within Baekhyun when he thinks it's because there's a part of Chanyeol that is also scared to lose him.

 

Is he? Is Chanyeol scared?

 

Can he believe that? Can he hope? Can he hope for that much?

 

“If you don't walk away from me now, can I take it that you still want me?”

 

Baekhyun responds by taking a step closer to his... husband. He cradles his hands to his chest and remembers how real the Maserati felt. The man in front of him, _Chanyeol_ , is real. He’s not dreaming at all. This is _real_.

 

“I'm afraid of not coming home to you. I'm afraid of the fact that you can as easily choose Jongin instead of me at this very moment for everything I have done. I don't think I'll ever stop being afraid, now that I know how it feels to almost lose you,” Chanyeol looks almost just like the boy he met at sixteen who stood out too much in his suit. Just almost, because Chanyeol has grown so much taller since then. Now he has to look up to see the bright, rounded eyes and the same elfish ears that still poke out of the his husband’s soft dark hair.

 

Chanyeol looks every bit of the man Baekhyun thought Chanyeol would be, smiling like this.

 

“I searched for you, Baek. I looked everywhere for you,” His husband tells him while gingerly approaching before wrapping arms around him, and Chanyeol has never embraced him this tight before… if Chanyeol ever embraced him at all. “I didn't want anyone else, Baekhyun. I thought of you, every time they asked. I thought of you, even if they didn't.”

 

Baekhyun realizes that Chanyeol is much stronger now, too, because when the man encircles his arms around him, he finds that there is no other choice but to let himself be surrounded by warmth. How many times has he imagined this? Hoping to see the boy he fell in love with in the man he married?

 

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry it took me this long to realize how foolish I've been. I'm sorry I hurt you by being so blind. I got side-tracked, I was stupid, I was distracted—I was _so_ many things, but I… I truly loved you. You were my dream, Baekhyun. Remember when we first met…?” Baekhyun can feel the slight trembling in Chanyeol's hands while he holds him, while he confesses the things he's always wanted to hear. “I said, ‘I’m glad to meet you again’, because you were my dream before I dreamed of anything else.”

 

Baekhyun stopped hoping he would ever hear these things when he left. He convinced himself he was ready to let Chanyeol go, that Chanyeol would be better off without him, but nothing hurt him more than realizing he wasn't. He wasn't ready to let his husband go. He isn't.

 

“You were mine, too,” he murmurs in his husband's arms, having waited so long to be held like this.

 

He doesn't want to stop calling Chanyeol his husband. He wants another anniversary to look forward to, not to stop hoping that the next year will be better for them.

 

“I don't want a divorce. I don't want to be away from you anymore,” He continues while trying to hold back the familiar prickling sensation in his eyes. “I want you to be happy, Chanyeol. But I want you to be happy with  _me_.”

 

“Baekhyun,” even if it's just a word, even if it's just his name, hearing it in Chanyeol's voice feels like every prayer being answered, and maybe it is. Maybe it is. “Please stay with me.”

 

Chanyeol parts from him but not completely, unwilling to let go and give him a chance to change his mind and walk away. Before he could start to speak, to begin to tell him how selfish he is for wishing that Chanyeol only find happiness with him, his spouse shakes his head and plants a kiss on the corner of his lips.

 

“What makes you think I'll be happy without you?”

 

It renders him speechless. The feeling stemming from the gesture is so foreign but far from being unwanted. Chanyeol leans close again with the promise of another, making him shut his eyes because the anticipation makes his heart pound so much in his chest. A tiny yelp escapes his lips when he's lift up by strong arms instead.

 

Baekhyun stares questioningly at his husband when his seat becomes the bonnet of the Maserati. He attempts to get off, only to end up rising further up the black exterior of the car when Chanyeol completely traps him with an arm on each side. The chaebol only smiles at his worry and presses an unanticipated kiss on his lips. It takes little for him to be coaxed into parting them for Chanyeol to claim and, when they find the need to part, they both wordlessly stay close to each other while Chanyeol is holding him like he's the most precious thing in the world.

 

“What makes you think I'd be happy to let this go?” Chanyeol's voice turns him into a mess, it always does, and he's almost scared that there will be nothing left of him if Chanyeol keeps whispering his name between every press of their lips and every bite on his neck.

 

Chanyeol's teeth grazes over the sensitive skin below his ear, making him shudder and moan when Chanyeol finally makes his mark there, as if wanting so badly to erase the memory of someone else ever having done the same.

 

Baekhyun slides his hands from his spouse's chest to explore the muscles underneath the other's shirt, biting down on his lip when he catches the satisfied smirk it brings to Chanyeol's face. He didn't think it was possible to find this man more handsome than he already does, especially when he's reminded that this is the same boy whose ego used to always get them both into trouble, but he supposes he doesn't mind. He doesn't mind if Chanyeol gets so stupidly full of himself as long as Chanyeol says he wants him; as long as Chanyeol says he wants them to be together, too.

 

“Don't,” Chanyeol quickly stops him when his hands travel dangerously low, breath shallow as he stares right back at Baekhyun's confused eyes.

 

“But aren't you...?” Baekhyun asks, flushing a deeper shade of rose when he cups Chanyeol's clothed hardness and Chanyeol unwittingly releases half of a low groan.

 

“I said no,” Chanyeol immediately snatches both of his hands, trapping them both in his bigger ones before his runaway husband can make another attempt. His palms are hot against the skin of Baekhyun's wrists, it's hot in all the places he is touched. “I do want you. God knows I want to have you right now, but you deserve more than this. I can give you more than this.”

 

“Chanyeol, really, it's—”

 

“Don't tell me it's okay,” Chanyeol interrupts, sounding angry and irritated, and the other knows it to be directed to himself more than anyone else. He shuts his eyes close and takes a deep breath, resting his head against Baekhyun's shoulder. “I love you, Baekhyun. I should not have treated you like that. I'm not going to treat you like that anymore, so please... please don't think waiting for a few more hours will make me leave you. I won't leave you, Baekhyun. I'm not going to leave you, so let me love you properly from now on.”

 

“You're my husband, and I love you. I love you. I love you,” The chaebol says and repeats as he raises both of his spouse's hands to his lips and kisses them.

 

That's when Baekhyun finally notices it. He finally sees the band of platinum wrapped around Chanyeol's finger.

 

 _His_  ring.

 

“I'm far from a man deserving of you, Baekhyun, but if you will have me, then I am yours,” Chanyeol smiles when he wipes the first of tears and kisses the next ones away.

 

Baekhyun tries not to cry, but he can't help it. He can't help it when it's what he has been waiting for, for  _so_  long. He throws his arms around his husband's neck and answers Chanyeol with a kiss.

 

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

_Yes._

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chanyeol holds him tight that night, locking their phones away and the door to their room so he could show Baekhyun just how much of himself Baekhyun can call his; what little there is that isn't.

 

“I love you,” is what Chanyeol tells him when it's just the two of them, breath hot against his throat and hands firm on his hips as he slowly sinks down and lets himself be filled. His skin becomes a garden for Chanyeol's kisses; one over the lids of his eyes for the tears Chanyeol couldn't keep from falling, another on his pink-tipped ears for the words only meant for him to hear, and two more on his soft palms as Chanyeol's promise to hold them from now on.

 

Chanyeol makes him feel like he's enough and more than that when he leans down, arms snug around his waist, and whispers, “Thank you for choosing me.”

 

 

 

❀ ❀ ❀ OMAKE ❀ ❀ ❀

 

 

 

“'Come to me if you decide you want a smarter husband'? Really? I let him get close to you and that's what he says?”

 

“Your father was just joking, Chanyeol.”

 

“Well, he better be. I'm never going to hand you over to anyone,” Chanyeol retorts. “Besides, everyone knows your name sounds best with Park in it.”

 

“You're being full of yourself.”

 

“I'm just being honest.”

 

“Okay, okay, let's stop this,” Baekhyun waves his hands in surrender, shrinking into his seat and at the flush of his cheeks and looking at everything but the chaebol beside him.

 

This is already more than what he has wished for. Maybe too much. A quiet dinner at home for their anniversary would have already made him so happy, and yet, despite Chanyeol’s busy schedule, they’re driving to Viva Polo tonight.

 

“You're not regretting having married me now are you?” the businessman jokes, before realizing what he just said and scowling. “You're not allowed to say yes.”

 

“Don't be ridiculous,” Baekhyun immediately responds, giving the Maserati a once over before tugging the businessman to his side.

 

“Ridiculous? Me?” Chanyeol asks as he steps back to admire the sight of his husband in the white suit, made more beautiful with Baekhyun's smile. It's such a wonderful sound, Baekhyun's laugh, no wonder his life seemed so unbearable without it. “Then, if I were to ask you to marry me again, would you say yes?”

 

Baekhyun laughs a little more before poking the tip of the other's nose. “Why don't you try proposing again?”

 

With Baekhyun's hand in his, and the other wrapped around the small box in his pocket, Chanyeol simply smiles while he leads them both inside Baekhyun's favorite restaurant.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you B D.V. and LT for having been so patient with me and for helping me not turn this completely into angst. :D Most especially, thank YOU for reading! Kudos are very much appreciated~ and comments are loved! <3 Ohhh and if you want to talk or anything, you can reach me at @viyeolent on Twitter~! :D
> 
> Edited typos and errors as of 2/05/16. Please do point out any errors left!
> 
> Also, this fic has been translated to [**Arabic**](https://bluefanfic.wordpress.com/2016/10/08/back-oneshot/) by NoOSBB!


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